Transcript for:
Exploring Exercise Physiology with Dr. Pat Davidson

welcome to the Dr Gabrielle lion show in this episode if you are a person who has ever been confused about what kind of training to do how much to lift in the gym my guest Dr Pat Davidson clears it all up for you he's a PhD in exercise physiology he's a former professor and this guy is jacked by the way you're going to love this episode because you're going to come away with a framework for how to think about training if you like content similar to this please take a moment to go to my website and sign up for my fully free newsletter that puts out information related to health and wellness and as always take a moment to share subscribe again this content is fully free for you now let's jump into the [Music] show Pat Davidson welcome welcome to the podcast it's great to be back I know this is great so people may not know this you were one of the first guests on the show I was really excited to talk everything body composition training you name it something that is very practical for people and you were a professor yes uh why don't you tell us a little bit about the fact that um you do don't take this the wrong way and look a bit like a meathead but actually um are a PhD and a former professor of exercise physiology yeah well I am a meathead you know like uh whenever I have to introduce myself to people in like regular life often times I'll do it as Dr Meathead so I I don't I don't run from that or I I like being a meathead you know I embrace it it's actually I don't embrace it I just am it you you just are it yeah I've always liked Sports I've always liked you know the traditional big strength power sports like typical American things baseball football um and you know it's been it's been my life and training for those kinds of things mixed martial arts strongman bodybuilding like that's what I grew up with that's what I still love so but even before so you started out being very interested in sports we're going to talk a bit about that but you did I believe you did your undergraduate and your PhD in exercise Fizz is that true I actually did my undergraduate in history and we won't hold that against you no I I specialized in modern European history I I thought I was going to be a high school history teacher and probably coach football and baseball and then that just didn't really work out so I went a different route and tell me what did you what did you get your PhD in I got my PhD in exercise physiology I got to Masters in strength and conditioning and you were a professor where did you teach at Brooklyn College first and then I went to Springfield College which is also where I got my PhD okay what was your area of focus um you know it at the time it was with hormonal uh concentrations in response to resistance training like really yeah a lot of we interested in that um you know wait tell tell me more about the hormone you mean the acute impact of say something like testosterone or igf-1 on hypertrophy of skeletal muscle or the uh responses to resistance training protocols uh this was the kind of the era dominated by William Kramer and William Kramer was like the most preeminent professor in that region uh he was at Yukon which is only like an you know a a hop skip and a jump from Springfield College and I actually was I interviewed with him to do my postto with him when I finished my PhD and you know he like it was sort of split like there was a a military research base in NAC Massachusetts and then Yukon and Brad nle was at the military base and William Kramer was at Yukon and they did a ton of work together and Kramer measured the growth hormone and nle measured the igf wow and um that was like the biggest area of research at the time in strength and conditioning uh hypertrophy based science and then and when was that that would have I got I finished I finished my degree in 2009 so it was sort of the early 2000s and the uh late 9s was the era of the hormone hypothesis which has been completely debunked wow and it's like these guys did these full careers on something that now people don't even bother looking at what just very briefly what what was the hypothesis the hypothesis was that certain types of resistance training protocols lead to significant increases in testosterone growth hormone um and that if you could create those responses it would be a much more profound hypertrophy response and it just turned out that what was happening under normal physiological levels of hormonal responses was literally a stress response so you'd see a spike in testosterone and growth hormone and cortisol when you would do things like around a 10 RM with 60 seconds rest with repeat sets and so it was it was hypothesized that you know those were the best kinds of workouts to do for hypertrophy so 10 rep max yep with short rest short rest with compound movements and with that you would get you know the biggest heat response the biggest hormone response it's but all it really was was the biggest stress response and so it was like what they sort of discovered with more data and bigger plots of time was that it wasn't enough time under the curve for hormone elevation to make any difference like when people are taking exogenous hormones the time under the curve of hormone act you know mechanistic Downstream Cascades is is full-time it's always elevated it's always doing what it should be doing and that's enough to make a difference but with these responses to exercise Boop it was like a tiny blip on the radar and it literally made no difference and they spent their whole careers doing that um and I William Kramer is still probably considered to be the most preeminent Sports scientist in American history wow even though the area that he was working in has now been debunked but I mean he was so good in so many areas it's like that was his primary research concentration and of course when just because something doesn't necessarily pan out the way that the original hypothesis would be there's still benefit from learning and gaining a foundation of information uh we can all we can I think we can all agree on that then you taught exercise physiology what were the things you so uh I gave you a quick little tour of the studio and the first thing that you noticed was there was an exercise metabolism book in the podcast guest Suite yeah I I was saying that I I I recognize that book and I use that to develop or or to you know to put all my biochemistry lect together that I taught with exercise physiology what were some of the biggest things that you taught what were some of the the the courses exercise physiology strength and conditioning uh let's see exercise testing and prescription for special populations statistics um you know those are those are kind of like some of the foundational courses both at the undergraduate and graduate level and when you say special populations do you mean aging population or that's one of them it's sort of uh let me think it it's children elderly people pregnant women people with metabolic uh syndrome problems uh that which includes like Asthma as well um obesity um you know there's skeletal like uh Orthopedic considerations as well do you and do you think that some of the literature has changed um sure regarding pregnancy children and training obesity I would imagine I mean obesity is so heavily funded pardon the pun but uh you know the the wherever the money goes is where most of the research is going to happen and I think that the the you know whenever you're pumping money into research and you have really smart people working in an area like you're going to see drastic changes really fast yeah when you decided to leave Academia where did you what did you do oh that's a whole other story I I actually uh one of my former students was working at a gym New York City called Peak Performance we have a mutual friend Don saladino Donnie uncle Donnie so Peak was kind of the Rival of drive it was sort of a very similar kind of a gym and at the time it was being funded by a super wealthy person and it was going to have a new flagship location 25,000 Square ft put on the corner of 14th Street in fth Avenue and it was like I was being hired to be the director of training and education and they had another person that was this super prominent physical therapist who was going to be the director of Rehabilitation and my former student was the director of internship anyways it was supposed to be like the next big thing and ultimately construction costs and problems and delays didn't P out just pulled the plug on it before it ever happened so but that was the reason I went to New York was to to work on that project and then all of a sudden I was just in New York I had gotten married and then the reason that I went there for was was just a non- entity so then it was like okay now what do I do so I kind of reinvented myself as just a independent entrepreneur an educator yeah I think you do a lot of Education you said something really profound on your Instagram and obviously I recommend that everyone follow you as long as you have a little thick skin that that's going to be important but you said something that in order to improve your body's ability to move through space and time you have to improve your body composition yeah I think it's just people for whatever reason don't appreciate the significance of when you alter you know body fat levels body like muscle levels like it's probably the most significant change that an individual person could make you know there's there's so many things that people focus on that are like smaller return on investment uh from a movement perspective for what would an example of that oh I mean I think that even stretching um you know does stretching work yes uh but you have to stretch in a progressively overloaded manner what does that mean that means like like it's got to be a very intense stretch and you've got to hold it for a significant amount of time and you have to always do more and it's got to be a little harder no very few people stretch that way um and even if you do it's kind of like a a fairly low return it's not like aerobic training where on day one you might be terrible but like if you keep at it for a month you're like oh I'm doing so much better it's uh versus if you actually lose weight and lose body fat your ability to move is going to be improved by you know tremendous orders of magnitude as I don't just mean like range of motion like range of motion will improve dramatically but even your ability to to run to do pull-ups to do dips to do push-ups when it involves moving yourself through space less fat and less weight will be the biggest Catalyst to Improvement of any variable and I'm also guessing increased muscle mass May uh potentially hinder that as well so if we are talking about is it just weight then would having more muscle mass actually be a challenge in in kind of this perspective or fromp you know when whenever you you can always look at these things and take it to the furthest extreme what's the greatest example of moving yourself through Space Ultra endurance races and you're not going to see anybody that looks like they're going to win the Olympia doing well in those things despite having tremendously low body fat so at a certain point just mass does matter I think that that's valuable and we're going to talk a lot about body recomposition fat loss muscle gain one question that I have for you is what is the biggest mistake that you're seeing in the health and wellness influence or exercise and you can only just pick your top just pick your top three biggest um things that the fitness industry has wrong this is I mean I saw this on the the sheet of like topics that we were going to go you wanted to gloss over it oh no like because in some ways it's like who am I to even know what's wrong you know or what's right like I think it would I need to eat my own slice of Humble Pie you know I think everybody does in in trying to assist like what's what's so wrong like boy I I don't know I think this is like you know if I actually knew the answer to this like this is the the billion dooll question in some ways you know I I think that the fragmentation of the industry is the biggest problem there's just there's no central theme that just ties everything together that people are aware of that really they can rally around it's just that there's so many tribes and Specialists and things like that that it's it's like I said fragmented as the best word I have for for what the problem is do you think that that is because it seems as if different body types do well at different things for example an ultramarathon person might feel that their body responds there's this a a book called The Sports Gene I don't know if you if you remember that book but do you think that maybe there's such a diversification or maybe even division is a better word because for example you might be built for power and power for you would be the thing in the way that you train whereas I might be built for I don't know hula hooping and Matt my producer over there might be built for Pick It hypertrophy ballet ballet yeah uh do you think that different body types um kind of go to different areas and maybe that's where the yeah I think vision is I think that it's almost two different topics I think number one yes people gravitate towards what they're good at and I think that most sports and often times activities are natural selection based like you just arrive at the place ultimately because it's like you just you're built for it you perform well they people follow their dopamine you know so but I think that you know from a fitness standpoint it's it's not as it's it's more homogeneous I think than we realize particularly for health the kinds of outcomes that we are looking for as a country you know I think that that you know you as a medical professional like getting into this and sort of this longevity topic where where we're kind of unpacking it and discovering like what are the variables that actually lead towards longevity and I think that you know you could probably summarize it in some ways as like muscular fitness aerobic fitness social health uh emotional well-being um you know those are those are some of the the major ones and like if I wanted to just get at like what drives muscular fitness yes you know it's it's like well the easiest way is to lift weights and there's a lot of different avenues that are not as specific and it would take you know 20 years longer to actually get the same results what would that be would that be say like Olympic lifting or something like that or yeah I think you know there's just like or or people that could look at and say like oh look at gymnasts are very muscular you know people should do gymnastics and it's like okay well if yes gymnast and are muscular usually when you see them and I think that there's tremendous strength associated with being able to do bars and rings and you know pommel horse and things like that but the skill level is through the roof the amount of time it would take to develop hypertrophy through those modalities would be significantly longer than just using barbells and machines and dumbbells and things like that do you think that there is a foundation of activities and if if the ultimate endpoint is longevity let's and maybe we should Define longevity or what we feel would be a significant realistic outcome I think maybe longevity is not necessarily maybe we take that off the table from a span perspective and we say physical longevity that would mean being able to do activities of daily living that would be going to the grocery being able to travel by yourself uh these are all things that we want to do and you and I perhaps at this age maybe we take that for granted and we assume that that will always be available we also want to be strong yep we I I think that it's one thing to say if I fall I want to be able to catch myself I want to be able to get up off the floor that's one perspective but I think a more valuable perspective is how do we go into the trajectory of Aging which we know is going to happen from a place of durability and capacity and in my mind that is where longevity starts and and probably ends right with that in mind what are the things that you think that everybody should be doing um and and and specifically as to why would it be hypertrophy would it be strength I know that you your goal is going to say your goal is going to be activating the tissue necessary MH to induce hypertrophy which is really I think what you find most valuable so all of that to say what are the things that we have to do yeah I I think from at least looking at the data and the research that is available I believe it's still the greatest predictor of all cause mortality is your V2 Max so your aerobic fitness is the top of the pyramid if you have a high enough V2 Max then it should support your ability to sustain life and to be able to move through space I think that muscular fitness has emerged as uh something that's like whoa how' we miss this agree you know and becoming more and more you know demonstrated in all walks of of importance here so what is it about it like number one I think that in order to be able to like V2 is is based on your your cardiac output and your avo2 difference so your avo2 difference is the more technical of the two I think like it's when your blood is out at the muscles it's how much oxygen leaves the the arterial side and is actually extracted and consumed at the tissue level so it's the difference between oxygen and the arteries and the veins okay but the the one that's like the bigger Hammer is the cardiac output which is stroke volume and heart rate you can't do anything about your heart rate in terms of it's It's genetically capped in terms of your max heart rate but your stroke volume is the one that is very modifiable and that's just how much blood gets pumped out by the heart every time it beats okay and ultimately what that comes down to is it's a supply meeting demand based system so if you are creating a demand for oxygen then your heart has to try to meet it okay but that demand is based on your mechanical output your actual movement that you're expressing with your body and I think that I don't think like what seems to be the model is that as people age they lose so much muscle tissue that they can't move through space with the force Power speed to create enough demand to make the heart Supply it so if if you're going to move through space the only way you do that is through skeletal muscle uh creating propulsion and if you lose enough muscle you can't create enough propulsion to move through space to create enough demand for the heart to actually meet and pump out enough blood so the base of the pyramid is threshold levels of muscle tissue and if you are holding on to that you can actually move with enough Force work all of the big hitter biomechanical variables that we look at to make the heart hit that demand so is and when that muscle tissue Falls below that threshold it's like all hell is going to break loose physiologically and you say below the threshold you're I'm assuming that you're talking about say you know Frailty or sarcopenia whatever those we don't even know I don't think we know what the threshold is um but it's you know it's it's basically you have crossed this line and you do not have enough muscle anymore to support the ba you know as an organism what are we we are a system of systems you know I have a cardiovascular system a have skeletal muscle system a nervous system lymphatic system blah blah blah have all these systems they all collectively work together to support a super system which is my whole self and any one of those systems can go and any one of them can be the first Domino and once that first Domino goes you tend to have multiple system failure and uh skele muscle might be the most commonly expressed first domino in our current societal State I I absolutely agree with you um and you know yes we can see numbers for sarcopenia an appendicular lean mass index that is low we can see based on graphs where someone should be but that is that is right at disease yeah that is that is you we're not good at testing skeletal muscle mass we're not good at understanding where someone should be we don't necessarily have a great framework for thinking about what is optimal I think this is a huge oversight in how we've thought about the importance of skeletal muscle but what I think is extremely valuable is what you're in what you're saying is that we agree upon that V2 Max is really important for longevity and this has been shown over and over again the question then becomes is what is the relationship between skeletal muscle and v2x and do we have an equivalent marker for skeletal muscle that we do for v2 Max great question and I I think that thought and is important for this one like so okay let me kind of unpack this one a little bit we might not yeah so the the one that really jumped out do we have an equivalent marker for skeletal muscle tissue as we would for v2 Max like V2 Max is the number that represents your aerobic fitness that is your aerobic fitness so muscular fitness tends to get divided into a few different Realms where we have uh I guess hypertrophy actual cross-sectional area of the tissue and then you have strength then you have power and then you kind of have some of these speed oriented things as well power and speed breaking that down is not that important right now um so the what I would say about all these things strength power speed is that they're very movement specific okay so my quadriceps don't necessarily contribute that much to a bench press where it's going to be more pectoral so do we have measurements for muscular fitness yes it's just that we have a lot of them because we have a lot of different muscles like the heart is just one muscle it's you know it is in and of itself a thing so and when you're measuring aerobic fitness you are generally speaking measuring the heart right that is and it is in a closed system that we know exactly what we're looking at and we're able to base on large data sets on understand what it should be yeah we don't have that with skeletal muscle yeah and you know skeletal muscle it does concentric behaviors it does Ecentric behaviors it does you know it it works differently in lengthen positions and shortened positions and it it expresses itself different at different velocities there's a lot of different tiny subtypes of muscular expression that you would have that you could look at if you want wanted to uh I think that the big thing is to look at it what is the biggest you know from a you know if I was going to create a hierarchy of variables I think number one is just cross-sectional area uh is probably you know strength the greatest predictor of strength is cross-sectional area meaning the size of your quadricep or the size of your bicep yes yep I don't know then that means I would be pretty weak cuz I am you just have low body fat a very tiny but I'm a very tiny person so I have small cross-sectional area we don't know that because I mean like it you have lower body fat than a lot of other females so while your circumference of your limbs might be lower there's probably less fat making up that measurement as well so you know the best way to measure cross-sectional area is probably with one RM testing um because then you actually know how strong the person is unless you have like you know an MRI or something like that but you know there's when you get into the topic of measuring body composition and all of the idiosyncrasies inside of that there every test has problems that is certainly true yeah basically what I'm hearing you say is that V2 Max is wonderful for the idea of longevity and cardiovascular health which we know aerobic fitness for muscular Health what I'm I'm hearing you say is strength and cross-sectional area or is it did I get that right yeah I okay so I think that like I'm just really this this is a very interesting question and I think that it's like if I'm thinking about it from a health perspective I I I like I'm starting to think like what are the most common like when we talk about like hey people like threats of longevity you know low Fitness is a huge threat but as people age like what what really happens is they become frail they fall they injure themselves or they get sick and when people get hurt or sick now they just Fall to Pieces they can't exercise they lose their Fitness disease overrides and and and it happens very quickly yeah within a week of bed rest an individual might lose three lounds of skeleton muscle mass yeah it just unravels it does you know so what could be protective against Falls or disease or things like that I think that like proximal muscle tissue is really important so I think about like musculature around the hip the the hip girdle lumbo pelvic femoral muscle is probably tremendously important as well as like scapulothoracic humoral muscle and that would be chest scapula back Yeahs traps lats deltoids pectorals uh biceps triceps you know and then for the lower body well certainly like abdominal muscles spinal Erectors uh glutes quads hamstrings um you know like the big hitter muscles that support the pelvis and the thorax when you now you did you work with clients did you ever train work with clients oh yeah you did when you did you ever work with I don't know say Prem per menopause postmenopausal women y um and Don salino and I talk a lot about this what do you think their best course of action is so let's take a woman who is I don't know mid 40 late 30s mid 40s we know that down the line she's going to go through hormonal changes she's probably already started she doesn't want to get this mid belly fat she doesn't want visceral fat she doesn't want fat around her organs how would you say and let's say she was an exerciser who did lots of cardio before she got a great V2 Max right um maybe she's taking some of the classes that we talked about earlier she comes to you or she comes to a a strength conditioning exercise physiologist what do you going tell her to do it sounds like she needs uh you know muscular training uh that that sort of Pops from the description that I'm hearing um you know particularly like as hormonal levels decrease with with getting older there's less support to skeletal muscle maintenance so muscle can you see it without enough stimulus it's going to start declining but it doesn't have to does it it doesn't have to no I mean you just create enough tension uh and and you're able to at the very least maintain it and um I would I would look I would go for trying to put muscle tissue on this person which would probably scare the hell out of her because in order to put on muscle tissue you do have to eat in a calorie Surplus and a calorie Surplus will be associated with some weight gain and usually that's when all of the alarm Bells start going off in you know in women's Minds about like oh no I'm getting bulky and this is happening this is happening and it's like you know it it usually doesn't take that long with a calor deficit diet to see like you weren't getting bulky like this is just you know this is what happens with calorie Surplus you know like it's it's very difficult to build things it's very easy to lose things isn't that crazy like everything I mean like 8 weeks in a calorie deficit is it's like strips everything away you actually see what you built but you know convincing people to go into a calorie Surplus and to strength train in a way that would actually grow some tissue for the population you're bringing up I think is a a psychological bees nest you know it's just like it is and it's a challenge because if people have I know I was talking to my makeup artist before you got here I figured you didn't need makeup but Katie Burns and no I did that myself did a great job we were talking about body recomposition and for example if a person is struggling with being overweight or obese which we know quite frankly is the majority of the population it's a huge percentage of the population but we also know that those individuals need to build muscle there's this idea that um people that have more weight on them have more muscle yes but that doesn't mention anything about the quality of the tissue which we know changes fat infiltrates uh there's fiic changes that happen over time if long enough would it be safe to say that those individuals would you still put those individuals who are going through body recomposition on a 10 to 20% calorie Surplus it's you know there's if when people are so at the beginning stage they can build muscle tissue and they likely will with very in a deficit you know it's like it it at a certain point you're not going to build any muscle tissue until you get into a surplus but you know I just look at it like there's a couple of levers that you can pull with people one of them is training stimulus and if that lever has never been pulled it's like very powerful and even if I do nothing with diet or the diet lever is like terribly orchestrated if if the if the training lever has never been moved before you can grow muscle tissue in someone with a bad deficit diet how do we know if someone has never reached a training an appropriate training stimulus yeah and this is a hard question because you and I have been in the health and wellness space for a long time and here's what we see we see a lot of people going to the gym and lifting 5B weights and not necessarily progressing or maybe progressing to 10B weights and then that might be 10 lb weights for a year right that is likely not is that a stimulus totally is it enough to likely maintain yeah the evidence would suggest that those kind of behaviors or habits would be enough to maintain but is that the stimulus that you are talking about I'm talking about you know Progressive overload like that's that's really it like and and it's so hard because there's so many levels to the onion of of like you know training in the United States and like what what needs to be done with people and it's kind of like there's the psychological part which is probably step one like just getting people to move away from their misconceptions and you know fears and things like that and get them to actually train with appropriate modalities with the right amount of intensity with the right amount of volume and like that's hard to do that's really hard to do really quickly I'd like to take a moment to thank one of the sponsors and that's fatty 15 you've heard all about essential fatty acids and fatty 15 is a new fatty acid the first one discovered in the last 90 years and let me tell you essential fatty acids are critical for health and wellness we've all heard this of course but fatty 15 is unique so it's a Carbon 15 and by the way it is going to be helpful for cellular aging um the reality is we're all getting older but there are ways and things that we can do to combat the destruction and impact our lifestyle has on our body and our brain and our mood fatty 15 is one of those supplements fatty 15 is amazing and it's extremely potent and by the way you will not be burping up fatty 15 because it is tasteless and odorless which also makes it amazing fatty 15 has great research behind it which again I think is extremely valuable so a lot of different supplements on the market I'm only bringing to you supplements that I love and use myself fatty 15 has helped me with energy I'll let you know about aging next year but fatty 15 is an amazing product I think that you're going to love it go to fatty1 15.com Lion that's fatty1 15.com lion and no surprise you will get 15% off on your first 90day subscription thank you to Zach do for sponsoring this episode of the show if you have not heard about Zach talk I'm about to change your life as adults we have to do responsible things like go to the doctor and Zach Doc is a free app and website that allows you to pair an in network doctor with your insurance and location it has never been easier not only that you can see what other patients have to say about these Physicians so that's high quality in network doctors super easy you can do it from your phone and we're talking about over a 100,000 different Healthcare Providers across every specialty so for example if you need to see someone about dental health or Eye Health or skin Health you name it Zach do has you covered plus Zach do appointments they happen fast typically within 24 to 72 hours of booking and sometimes you can even get a same day appointment this is truly amazing and it's an amazing feature again this matches your location your insurance and providers and allows you to get whatever it is that you need done and again being an adult isn't always easy but Zach do definitely makes it easier go to zach.com that's zo do.com lion that's Zach do.com slad do lion and you can get instantly booked with a toprated doctor I got some big news for you I am so excited to announce a partnership with Quicksilver scientific now Quicksilver products I have been using these for myself and in my clinical practice for years so when I finally had the opportunity to partner with them I couldn't be more excited let me tell you about the three top products that I have been using for over for 6 years and they are thriven nanom Mojo yeah you heard it right nanom Mojo and liposomal glutathione these products are amazing and here is why I love thriven which is a Woman based formula it has a ton of adaptogenic herbs meaning things that help the body's resiliency it has ashwagandha Rola and many other herbs that help with resiliency stress man management and overall energy which is one reason why I love it and it's in a formulation that allows for sublingual delivery meaning you put it in your mouth you hold it for 30 to 60 seconds and then you ingest it it is been so helpful for me and then the nanom Mojo is a male-based Formula nanom Mojo is absolutely incredible for guys that are really hard charging and it really helps with resiliency Stress Management all of the things that IID mentioned earlier these are two amazing products and then of course there's liposomal glutathione for detoxification if you have not tried any of these three products you should go to Quicksilver scientific use the code Dr lion that's Quicksilver scientific and use the code Dr lion for 15% off I have been a lifter my whole adult life and it doesn't necessarily mean that I fully understand can I use machines or not can I get the same stimulus from a weight machine versus a hack squat versus a leg press and you were the first person that really changed my perception of what was possible and what is necessary for stimulus which has me asked the question what is a reasonable Paradigm yeah to follow and by the way your shirt says rethinking big patterns I'm assuming that this is all this is my you know tell me yeah so it's funny I I I hopped in my in the elevator of my building a couple weeks ago and um one of the maintenance guys was in there and he's like you going to work out right now and I was like yeah and he's like how how long have you been doing that and I was like I don't know maybe it's like 20 years or something and then I was like wait what year and I I was like oh my god I've been lifting weights for 30 years wow like it just kind of dawned on me like that's it's a huge chunk of time to to be involved with something so you know I um I like this has been my whole life like it's you know education yes but like from a practical experience from a what do I care about like this is this is it you know so I'm deeply invested in in training and um and and so I I think that what I'm pretty good at is building models and creating Frameworks for things and um and that's that's what I think is really missing overall for people to be able to follow is just and and I I say that because it's like there's a lot of great information there's a lot of but but like can somebody do something with it to make it more user friendly and helpful like where the hell do I start what do I do and so that's what you know this idea of like a you know a a better Paradigm kind of comes from and so from a muscular standpoint like where do people start like we have fundamental principles uh for training that exist like if you open up any textbook exercise physiology or strength and conditioning there is usually four principles that get presented specificity overload individual differences and reversibility reversibility means that you can always lose whatever it is that you built they should take that one out that one's the worst one you know I used to have this picture of Diego meridana the soccer player on the slides that I would have because you know he at one point in time was the greatest soccer player in the world and then ballooned up out of control like obese like 300 pounds it's like this is the same guy you know so you can you can doesn't matter what you were what you were at any point like you can you can go in the opposite direction um individual differences just means you know different people will respond differently some people have a higher genetic ceiling for adaptation other people have a lower overload means that it has to be the the the stimulus has to be strong enough to be able to get you to change to adapt to Res respond with your body to get better over time and specificity is probably the king of principles and it means that in order to get better at something you have to do pretty much exactly that thing um and specificity is the area that I really try to tackle with the models that I put together so if we're talking about trying to grow muscle and you're starting the conversation with specificity like you know what we talked about before with hey the heart is just one thing it's it's a one muscle but if I look at your whole body you've got hundreds of muscles around your body 600 and something like we have to look some insane number and each one like does each one need to have its own individual exercise no but there's regions at the very least where if all I did was squat I wouldn't have much deltoid development you know so I need to at least Begin by having an exercise that targets muscles and that might be the biggest you know checkpoint of all of these boxes that I would cover like you know if if you have an exercise for your biceps that features elbow flexion and you do it hard enough with enough weight it it almost like okay great that's probably 80% of the game right there and from The Listener uh for the listener or the viewer however they're choosing to consume this material does it matter what muscles you're picking because it would be very arbitrary uh you know Monday is universal chest day everyone's doing chest and then there's Wednesday which is universal leg day but you know Matt doesn't do legs ever or calves so how do we think about does everybody need to do a bicep does everybody need to do tricep or can we say if a woman who is new to or man is new to hypertrophy training mhm would there be things very specific that you would pick for example do you pick a squat a hinge a push pull how does someone get through all of the confusing information out there you sure well I think that from the standpoint of what do you have to do if we're looking at this from a longevity perspective okay so if you look at the most common fracture sites what you have is hip spine wrist as the the big three and so I would have to load those structures in order to create adaptations at the level of the bone to be able to make the bone have greater density and resilience and decrease the likelihood that it will fracture to certain forces uh up which makes a lot of sense yeah which makes so if I'm going to load the hip and the spine I I would need some kind of you know standing exercise that actually loads the axial skeleton so something where you know probably the weight is in the hands or pushing down on the shoulders to be able to create enough stimulus for those areas to respond to hip spine wrist yeah well for and for wrist often times it's like that's usually like an upper body load you know like some kind of compressive Force pushing down through the wrist and so when you start thinking about that it's like well you know probably some kind of a hinge some kind of a squat for the lower body in order to be able to stimulate hip and Spine and then some kind of a press and some kind of a pull to stimulate the upper body for wrist which all which all that makes sense so yeah and this is very practical and important for people to understand and we are going to show you in a video um in a series of videos what Pat is talking about but again the conversation is longevity how do we go and tackle the inevitable aging process which probably doesn't have to be as rough as it is how we're seeing it now because we are largely a sedentary right population you would choose something to load each of these areas hip spine wrist yeah um when you talk about the Paradigm and and you and I have talked a lot about again the skeletal muscle adaptation do you then decide after you've picked how many exercises are you picking and and I understand that there's a spectrum but just take us through from a beginner standpoint how many exercises what kind of loads what kind does Tempo matter how can we frame everything up to just say you know what I listen to Pat and I'm going to go to the gym tomorrow talking to you Mom and you're they're going to execute yeah I so I think that like where where this leads us is sort of this topic of the constraints of hypertrophy for so like and and I'll tell you like Mike isrel from Renaissance per he's coming on the he's coming on the Pod oh amazing I mean this is like this is his wheelhouse like he has uh videos on YouTube like like there's like these foundational RP videos and like he has this whole constraints of hypertrophy series that I think is fantastic and very very well constructed and he's amazing so I'm excited I I think that this this really is is a big part of my mentality in terms of what I'm talking about from these these Concepts as well so I think you know number one with from a specificity standpoint we need to Target and stimulate the major muscles that would be lumbo pelvic femoral so lumbar spine pelvis and femur and then th thoro scapulo humeral so you know the thoracic spine the scapula and the humorous and so if I'm going to get those muscles like I said it's some kind of a hinge some kind of a squat some kind of a horizontal push some kind of a horizontal pull some kind of a vertical push some kind of a vertical pull those are the big categories that I lay out as like these are sort of the the foundational essential patterns that you need to everybody should be doing you agree with this yeah life is better this way and everyone should be doing this so that and that has really been in the textbooks for a long time and and that that has not changed once a beginner chooses these exercises um how many exercises should they choose Y and I think that we put this together we looked at um I have to look here but I think that when we were talking about it you said we defined the categories of resistance training just legit istically you said starting at anywhere from 8 to 24 sets per week mhm 5 to 30 reps yep two days a week yep so I'm going to repeat that for everybody and again you guys we have a program for you to check out and it's starting at eight sets eight to 24 sets so that's um per week and 5 to 30 reps yeah two days a week yeah I mean I think like what this and again this is very Mike isrel like based and and he does a great job I think of of having a really big picture view of of all of the research on this and then having these sorts of like upper and lower ends that make sense depending on on what we seem to know from the evidence and and I think that what's important is like to point out number one science is not an N equals one phenomenon like it's a what do you mean tell me more so science speaks in generalities Okay so these recommendations are going to be for average you know what I mean like the like every individual person can fall above or below these sorts of boundaries and so I think that's important to understand is that like what I'm going to present to you is is probably the most middleof the road sort of a thought process but there's extremes that can exist and people can fall into extremes or so when we're talking about this this is sort ort of like upper and lower ends that like if you're going bowling like we have kind of the gutters never been you got the gutters on both sides we want to avoid the gutters we want to roll the ball down the middle and have it hit the P you mean you're not supposed to just put it now I know why no one ever invites me bowling okay so you know what the research seems to suggest is that in order for muscles to grow somewhere around a minimum of a like 10 sets a week is is about the the level you know so if I want my biceps to grow 10 sets for the biceps done per week is like the the minimum it seems now the problem with being a person is that that which used to work for you will cease to work for you as you make progress and improvements do we know how long that is so you do you define a beginner who is doing resistance training through a period of weeks would it be 6 to8 weeks or is it just overall training age when someone who is listening to this they say okay well am I beginner am I intermediate how fast can I expect some kind of gains or hypertrophy yeah well I think that a beginner a beginner is someone that can improve make Progressive quantitative improvements session to session I learned that from you and I I thought that was very interesting a beginner is someone who is going to make progression from day to day is that right day to day week to week or is it day to day it's very common if I have a a new guy that comes in never lifted weights before in his life and like we put put him on the bench press on Monday uh struggled to get the bar you know got the bar for five reps it was wobbly and shaky comes back in on Wednesday and gets the bar for 20 reps you know and I'm like whoa okay comes back in on Friday and I put tens on both sides of the bar and he gets it for 20 reps and then it's like you know he's made hundreds of percentage points improvements across a week and and that can happen like it's it's just every system in the body is is sensitive and fresh and new to learning with this stuff and it's like you know exponential rates of gains very quickly session to session do you you see that strength that's probably neurological adaptation there's a a whole host of reasons strength will happen faster than hypertrophy yes how long and you know I was looking at some of this data I spoke to Don Layman about it I messaged Sue Phillips about it it seems as if um it is so variable if someone is new let's say a new drug-free um they uh could potentially put on two pounds of skeletal muscle a month yeah maybe if it's a a young man I don't know do we have a Cadence for middle-aged men and women MH who are eating a higher protein diet and in a an appropriate calorie range yeah do we know how fast they can put on muscle I don't think that there's I I mean look like I I I'm sure that there's I bet there is some research somewhere that actually tackles this I'm not aware of of that information what I usually hear is people that you know they generally talk about like look like what we're really dealing with is you're putting on grams of muscle tissue per week you know like so it's it's a frustrating game in in reality because like the rate of adaptation is so slow that it's like frustrating for most people because your mind is going a lot faster like the pace of modern society is a lot faster but unfortunately physiology is from the Stone Age and it goes really slow and the sensitivity of our testing the majority of individuals measuring body composition will get dexa right dexa is not very sensitive to those very small changes right right an individual may be training putting everything into it and I don't know not seeing gains until they see gains and that that can be very challenging for people I think that though like the an easier way to think about this is that there is a sequence of adaptations that happens in response to resistance training and it generally works from superficial to deep so the first changes that take place will be neurological um and then you know you'll improve the the firing and the sequence of the nerves that speak to the muscles for a movement so you'll use more muscle fibers of an individual muscle to be able to power a movement and then you'll begin to recruit additional muscles as well to contribute to that that movement uh and then the next series of adaptations would go to the muscle tissue uh and what we know is that there is a sequence of what sorts of proteins we synthesize so the first kinds of proteins that you'll synthesize will be structural proteins so the you know your muscle cells are made up of kind of like uh barriers cellto cell um you know you have a a z disk that divides specific fibers from one another and then you have kind of a lattice like network of of structural proteins that actually form What's called the cytoskeleton so the basically the foundation and the infrastructure of the cell itself uh and things like Titan is a is a prolific structural protein but you will synthesize those first basically you're you're building a stronger foundation for the cell and you're making it assembled in a way where it's more robust after that you'll synthesize contractile protein so act in theasin that are actually the things that create tension and Pull and shorten the cell and are able to demonstrate Force production externally and would that be myop fibular proteins yes and the the mention before that are you talking about sarcoplasmic hypertrophy or is this more just ribosomal no it's it's ribosomal protein synthesis it's just that you have the structural proteins first and from what I understand from a timeline perspective it's typically like 2 to four weeks I believe where you're going to be doing structural protein synthesis and then following that you will begin to go into uh contractile protein synthesis and that will take place for you know weeks like anywhere like weeks three four up to like 12 to 16 weeks so it's funny because people like the topic of exercise variation can get brought up and people varying exercises switching exercises and I'm kind of like you don't really want to switch exercises in my mind for a minimum of like 12 weeks because people switch exercises every four weeks and I'm like you just went through neurological relearning and structural protein synthesis and you didn't even start contractile protein synthesis for the motor units for that specific exercise stick with one exercise for at least 12 weeks to be able to actually create protein synthesis of contractile proteins for those muscles and if you can continuously do some kind of progressive overload would you ever have to switch your training program I mean aside from being very bored but I mean would there ever be a physiological need I think that there's real world logistical things that you have to consider like if you get really strong at a specific exercise it can kind of beat you down you know like you're connected so again like it's the sequence of adaptation that that really gets interesting because again it goes from superficial to deep nerves and then muscles are are what will adapt next structural and then contractile then the next tissue that tends to go into adaptation will be the connective tissue the the tendons in particular and following tendons now you get into bone remodeling so like I said it's just a it's you're getting deeper and more towards the center of the body as far as the the adaptations actually happening what's interesting is it does continue to go further and further after that where you then ultimate like the most deep adaptations are epigenetic changes at the level of like the nuclei and then finally uh changes in the gameit uh which would be expressed genetically being passed off to The Offspring it's incredible yeah it's incredible um I was looking at the protein turnover muscle protein turnover is 1 to 2% per day and collagen is is and tendons they're much slower yeah um I don't know how fast bone turns over but it's slower there's this Cadence of being able to leverage skeletal muscle to push the limits of physiology and also health and wellness yeah and from a timing of changing exercises though at a certain point like you're just kind of beating up the joints with with the same exercise like it's it's um you know I don't it's not a perfect explanation but I would just say like you can if you really stick with an exercise long enough you can get really strong at it and there's like almost some downsides to that where it's like you know your joints can start to get like I said inflamed beat up and then if you just simply rotate to a new exercise often times it's like fresh it feels good on your joints like you're not strong enough at it at this point for it to to Really create that much of stress so yeah that makes sense I have a lot of questions for you um we might even take a break to ask five questions so you do rapid fire questions yeah this was actually my producer's idea I'm I'm game for whatever here it it actually goes yes or no mhm okay so it's Shake wake no that was Matt's question stretching I know it's very hard for peach I don't think it's worth it for most people cardiovascular training yes okay um creatine yes um testosterone replacement murky um okay fair yes so the real so the real the real question um that Matt had I'm not even going to mention I'll I'll joke it off air to you okay I'm super curious now I'm sure everybody is yeah it's actually very funny but I'm not sure if anyone else would find it funny you would definitely find funny um walking yes yoga yes okay so basically any physical movement is something that you agree with yes gluten it's fine for most people totally fine um agree with you yeah I think Matt you got any other other questions any of our we did more than five I don't know if you have any more your yes or no just that one question okay well we're going to ask that one question off air friends if you are in our private Community I will definitely put the private Community question up there and you can all get a very good laugh which by the way you're going to think is very funny I can't wait um so we talked about resistance training and that importance for physiological adaptation what we have to do for longevity we talked about has to be 2 days a week what what is where I guess the next question is after resistance training there is you know you mentioned the importance of cardiovascular fitness joint Integrity where does high-intensity interval training fit into any of this if if all it doesn't it doesn't need to it's um I think that it's just it's it's nice to have options and I think that it's it's an option for people to develop their aerobic systems and it can fit in nicely for for people if they are limited on time and um they're okay with doing some really hard stuff for a shorter period of time where does it fall into um from the hypertrophy standpoint so if you were to say there is different categories of resistance training is there yes for sure okay yeah tell me the different categories of resistance training so that we can have just from an over an overview of when we say resistance training what exactly are we talking about yeah I think that it's that's a a great question and a problem that currently exists because it's not a one siiz fits-all thing so there's strength training you know which is like one to five repetitions generally speaking and like oftentimes used by competitive strength athletes like powerlifters and um and that's one to five so strength is one to five yeah roughly you know yeah roughly and um you know you're going to get certain adaptations and there's some bleed over between these things but think of it as kind of a ven diagram uh strength training is largely neurological it's more neurological than it than it is necessarily like muscular it really improves uh you know recruitment rate coding synchronization firing of the nervous system more than anything then you have more hypertrophy training can I ask you a question before you hypertrophy if strength training is more neurologic in nature would those individuals be more likely to be inhibited by uh say overtraining or stress well I think not necessarily if they did enough volume of it yes like it would be really brutal and you know we have some like you know we've kind of alluded to it the upper and lower limits for reps that you would do to grow muscle tissue and it's sort of five on the low end and 30 on the upper end you don't really want to do few than five reps typically if your goal is to grow muscle tissue why because well the research seems to indicate that it just beats up your joints too much if you're going to do that much volume okay where if you go a little bit lighter you have tend to see less joint uh provocation and you know but this this other category of just resistance training for muscle growth is not synonymous with strength training and again there's bleed over like but it's all resistance training because you're moving your body against or you're moving something against force is that how you would Define resistance yeah you you're you are creating force with your muscles to move something through space okay either yourself or an external object or a person I'm kidding I mean yeah I mean like wrestling is strength training but again it's not the most streamlined way to accomplish hypertrophy like I'm not going to recommend four sets of wrestling to most people it's like when you could it could be the thing yeah right I'm sure it will be like you guys heard it here first um so then you also have like what I would say like resistance training for uh speed and power Athletics where you know if like I might be doing things uh involving really like like launching things fast through space with certain populations give me an example well if I'm training a tennis player and I've got like a nice cable set up with like you know there's certain like Kaiser is an pneumatic uh resistance exercise company and they make a functional trainer with it's a cable machine but you can move this thing really fast and it doesn't have slack in it the way that uh free weights would you're you're trying to create very high rate of force development and I could do it with rotational movements that would be more similar to the movements in tennis as compared like does that athlete need to be very muscular no like if you look at Elite tennis professionals they often times are not very muscular athletes but they can rotate at unbelievably High velocities and hit a tennis ball way harder than I can yeah um so it's it really is population specific and I I try to just break it down simply by saying like sort of uh you know strength speed hypertrophy as an easy way to do it an older individual my dad was just here visiting from Ecuador and I you know I took him to the gym and I was thinking he's going through obviously not obviously but he's very tight he's working on strength does lots of body weight type push-ups but the other thing that when I was looking at the literature there seems to be a decline in both force and speed as we age and to me I was thinking okay well what could someone do beforehand would that be something like a ball slam a medicine ball slam would it be something like ropes how can an individual prevent that decline what are SK and is that an important skill to have so you know this ties into this uh the Aging research and power is this variable that pops when you really get into the data uh where you power is uh work divided by time or you could think of it as like uh strength times velocity you know that that's a a pretty good way to strength so if you were picking if I were to think about this I'd be picking up a 10 lb medicine ball for for strength and then would I be throwing it would that be yeah you're expressing it with speed okay you know you're you're both able to have high force and high speed happening simultaneously I think is it's a probably a wrong way to say it in in from a technical standpoint but it gets the point across and you know there there is a the the problem with the reason that power comes out as this this variable that is like oh my God it's dropping so much with aging populations is because it's a it's a ma it's a multiplication equation if you think like strength time speed equals power if speed drops power drops if strength drops power drops if they both drop it really drops okay so that it's it it it it gets highlighted just simply because of the equation style so you know the the natural reaction to this is oh my God old people need to do more fast stuff then and it's like whoa let's hold on a second um and everyone's going whoa who are you calling old yeah well you know I just sometimes just trying to say these things uh and look I think that from a practical standpoint of training people across a very widespread of Ages and ability levels the average person exercising when you try to get them to do higher velocity things it's a train wreck and I'm like H not it's not worth it like I've I've seen enough attempts to get people to do things like jumps or throws where it's like there's not enough horsepower there for the exercise to be expressed the way that it should be expressed so take a pause there because I I think it's really important from the perspective frankly nutrition is easy I can say you know what Pat you're going to have 100 gram of protein 100 * 4 is 400 calories you know or whatever it is right um or 100 calories of of protein you know what I'm saying there's four calories per one gram of dietary protein whatever the equation is but when we're talking about exercise stimulus it is so variable it becomes increasingly difficult not just from a a confusion standpoint but from a conversation standpoint of saying you know what Hey Dad I need you to do 10 box jumps yep and we watch Nate do a box jump and basically it might be a partial jump or he might fall not necessarily fall but he might not be able to elicit the amount of power necessary is that what you're talking about yeah I think it's it's it's a combination of a couple of things number one if you just look at the rate of adaptation the rate of change or the magnitude of change uh certain Fitness types have a big potential for change like the Aerobic System has an enormous potential for change I could take someone off the couch and maybe they run a mile in 11 minutes on day one and if I train them very effectively for aerobic fitness and running you could believe that they might be able to run a 7 minute mile by week 15 okay that's like not outside the realm of of reasonability why because there's so many like your mitochondria can adapt in terms of number and enzymes inside of them and the Heart can get so much more effective at pumping blood out and the arteries can dump more into like you can have more capill that can you have so many things that can change in response to that stimulus okay if I'm looking at speed and and high rate of force development things I have my phosphagen energy system which could influence this that thing changes like practically nothing okay it might not even change there's like kind of confusing research on that the one thing that will definitely make it change is taking creatine yeah okay I was just thinking that yeah crein system that might be better than training uh and then it's almost like if if you could only jump over a matchbook on day one by week 12 you might only be able to jump over two matchbooks like it's not an impressive change that takes place so okay so what you're saying is that it's low return on investment a focus on hypertrophy with hypertrophy right and you correct me is where you get good muscle tissue muscle tissue and ultimately good muscle tissue healthy skeletal muscle tissue supports V2 supports cardio uh Fitness supports cardiometabolic Health we don't have to do if what I'm understanding is correct we don't have to do explosive type exercises that are specifically designed for I think things that would be a power measurement okay are not necessarily the best training modalities to pursue to improve power I bet you if I had an older population and I increased their muscle tissue by using more like hypertrophy specific resistance training their power tests would probably improve more than training them with power modalities and and part of it is that it's just again the actual magnitude of adaptive change is like you get almost no change from speed exercises you mean you get no change physically or yeah like there's very few Target tissues that will change much like like I said give an example of a speed activity that's purely speed or something like that a box jump for that population okay like versus if I had them do 12 weeks of hack squatting with appropriate weight and progressively overloaded it uh you know if I had them do a 12we box jump program I'd probably see minimal changes in muscle tissue minimal changes in any anything I measured I'd probably see minimal changes in and I'd probably see minimal changes in Jump height too and people don't appreciate that and there all this is also it puts individuals at risk also for injury absolutely um so the juice might not be worth the squeeze or whatever they say and then I I can almost guarantee like again this is It's Tricky I don't have the research support to be able to make this conclusively but my feeling is that they would probably improve their jump height more through the squatting with that population than they would through jump training specifically the the last thing is I've watched it enough in person and sometimes it's like if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's a duck and when you watch people that have low training histories and are older try to do these things it's just like oh God please stop like that is not the way that should look that is not anything that I ever want to see again you know and and you know we're we're kind of teasing about it but it's not from that perspective it's we don't want people to get injured it's partly that but it's also like I'm just looking at this thing and it's like that's not going to do anything nothing is happening so nothing's going to change like when you watch people do medball slams and they don't have the athletic background and they don't have the training history and they don't have the strength it it's just like the most G like it's it's like that wouldn't watching Matt do it pain in glass you know it's like this Mar throw is not going to do anything so you know I I think that it's I'm I'm I'm looking at it from those perspectives thank you to our place for sponsoring this episode of the show our place has changed the game for me our place makes cookware and a number of other kitchen appliances now in case you didn't know this I'm a mom of two little children my kids right now are five and three and I've spent a lot of time being very concerned about what I was cooking in because kids let's face it are vulnerable and their bodies are much smaller I was very worried about these forever chemicals that are in traditional cookware forever chemicals and you know we've all seen Teflon maybe we've used Teflon and eaten out of it for many years I know that I have and I didn't want that for my kids so when I heard about our place from a fellow physician it changed the game for me and before our place decided to come on as a sponsor I have to tell you that I purchased the perfect pot and it has changed the game for me so if you are listening to this and you want cookware that is Pas Faz free and does not have toxic chemicals in it which you should so this is a toxic free ceramic coating beautiful pot for healthy safe cooking very important friends I strongly suggest you check out this company you can go to from our place .c that's from our place.com and use the code Dr lion you'll get to try these products for a 100 days and I guarantee you will love them it's our place 100 day trial with free shipping and returns use the code Dr line you'll get 10% off these products are incredible our place well done thank you to Bon charge for sponsoring this episode of the show let's face it we live in an environment where there are tons of insults insults from being inside out of the elements and when I say elements I mean sunlight I love Bond charge products they make a whole host of products and particularly I love their red light therapy I love the red light panels which has near infrared and red light it is very warm red light therapy has been used for a very long time and by the way it's FDA approved for fine lines and wrinkles I use the full panel across my whole body and in just in case you want to get ready early for Halloween you can use the red light mask which I use frequently and I love because it directly is on my skin on my face I use it three times a week and I am telling you I have noticed a difference if you are someone who struggles with energy or sore muscles or just overall fatigue definitely check out bonch charge check out their red light therapy I get tons of questions on red light therapy Bond charge is an incredible product very wellmade made in Australia shipped worldwide you can get yours go to bond charge.com use the code Dr lion for 15% off that's Bond charge.com use the code Dr lion for 15% off now back to the show one of the most important responsibilities you have as a human is to get your blood work done in a regular Cadence you cannot out work outthink or outmaneuver your own health health is the great equalizer to all dreams inside tracker is the blood work company I use and recommend no one loves getting their blood work done uh but at least I can make it easy and affordable by using my link insid tracker.com lion you can get 10% off the inside tracker subscription and any plan by using data from your blood nobody else else's DNA and fitness trackers like Apple watch Ora inside tracker gives you personalized and scienced fact recommendations on things you can take control of to optimize your health you have to be able to see if what you are doing is working and where you need to improve whether you want to improve your hormones brain heart health inside tracker reveals the exact areas of your health that needs Improvement through comprehensive blood testing DNA analysis sleep and fitness tracking data and of course currently your daily habits I love you guys and deeply believe that you are responsible for your own health so if no one is coming to save you you have to save yourself and save 10% off the insid tracker subscription and any plan go to insid tracker.com Dr lion that's insid tracker.com lion for 10% off insid tracker subscription and any plan it makes a lot of sense because while in theory these things are really great right in theory I want to I'm not really that athletic in theory I would love to be able to do a medball slam and have it look as good as when I see Dan catrick do it uh who's a friend and it it when you see someone atic it's like you see someone athletic or you see Stephie Cen do it you see someone athletic do it and then you see you know I'm trying to do it and and it looks so different meanwhile I'm exhausted doing it and they're exhausted doing it but they're recruiting and moving in a way that has finesse and it seems to have saf coordinated it's skilled it's you see it and you're like wow that's a thing you see when you see it you know it and maybe there are certain things that you don't have to do to get better at the ultimate outcome which is force or speed production or power and that is actually what we're getting it and yes I'm teasing my producer Matt only because he's over there and boy does he bust my chops when we are not on camera so this is my only time to do it now I want to move into something that is very complex for me to understand so I want you to talk to me like I am in third grade or less because you and I spent a considerable amount of time thinking about and I spent time learning from you putting together a program by defining certain things and for the listener you guys this is going to be new to you I'm assuming because it was very new to me and you know where I'm going with this this idea of uh ground and I'm not talking about coffee grounds I am talking about this idea of ground High Ground medium ground low ground I don't even know what that means when I hear ground I think of coffee and beef yep that's all I know about ground in relation to training so you have to talk to me best this slowly yep and this is this is my baby like this is my is that boy or girl mom jok's coming in hot all right guys don't turn this off I'm just trying I'm just trying to loosen up the science for you all okay so right this this is kind of like if you know if if I have a thing that's uniquely me this is really like my topic so I I read this paper years ago uh it was by Glazier uh in 2017 and it was called um you know moving towards a grand unified theory for exercise science and um it had like a subtopic to the title as well but you know I just noticed like this guy is a researcher and he's ballsy enough to say that he's got the grand unifying theory for exercise science wow I'm gonna what is what is this and it's aka the constraints paper and so you know I had to read this thing a few times it's not an easy paper to read and um the constraints paper yeah it's but it's the title of it is moving towards a grand unified theory of exercise science that sounds like a physics paper yeah well okay I mean constraints kind of move you in that direction so constraints are blockers they create boundaries and we without constraints you have random movement in all directions constraints create Direction and this is as a giant topic like it's not specific to what we're talking about deep but we're going to pull it back to this idea of understanding constraints and where this falls into training constraints create shapes and they create Direction okay and um Glazier breaks down the constraints for humans in this paper by saying that there are individual constraints task constraints and environmental constraints so the IND I like that it's Wise Wise so I assembled rethinking the big patterns the seminar series that I teach and I have a seminar for individual constraints and I have a I have two seminars primarily for environmental and task constraints the what what it was just briefly what what is that so in the primary individual constraint for human movement is the skeleton so the unique assemblage of the human skeleton creates the unique expression of human movement where if I was to watch a silhouette go by I would know like oh that's a human and not a giraffe and not a hyena and like the indiv unique constraints of their skeletons create the way that they move that we can observe and we know that it's different which is fascinating to really think about and so as a for instance like if you have surgery and somebody puts screws in a plate into your shoulder that changes the constraints for your shoulders ability to move okay and then there's also ways in which I can analyze your skeleton and the general shapes of it and your body type and and possibly be able to make some temporary modifications with certain exercises to be able to open up the possibilities for you to move slight differently more or less would that be for example choosing um a basically a squat based on uh arm length or a Sumo deadlift based on get as much into that as it gets into like me being a I'd put you on a table test and I'd say okay you have 105 degrees of hip flexion and then I would sort of measure like the angles of your rib cage and other things and have a game plan for how like the funny thing people don't realize like how much you can change the shape of someone's rib cage acutely through breathing and specific exercise strategies and when you change those shapes you change the ability of the arms and the legs to move through space that's fascinating and if it is it's a whole if you guys want to learn more you can check out his rethinking patterns which will it's a whole two-day seminar on that stuff which will link but what I want to stay focused on is the the other constraints are the more more specific to resistance training particular like task constraints I can quickly kind of get into and say like I'm going to give you the the squat as an exercise but I can modify the task and it would change the way that you would squat if I said hey I'm going to have you I want you to do body weight squats and I'm going to see how many you can do in half an hour ex oh my God or if I said I want to see how many you can do in 5 seconds you would squat very differently based on me actually changing the task constraints okay and you can do that in a million different ways okay but environmental constraints are the big one uh that I kind of looked at and made the Cornerstone for how I Define resistance training for people and so I said to myself okay like environment all right what do we what do we you mean by this like what's the environment of Earth like you know anybody can kind of figure that out they can go outside or they can turn on the weather you can go to Texas yeah and so I said to myself okay a lot of things can impact the environment you can have altitude you can have humidity you can have wind you can have precipitation those are all significant impacts to the environment but is there one thing that really is most you know uh powerful from a v yes the solar load okay okay like if you are closer to the Equator it's probably going to be hotter than if you're further away from the equator and it's winter time for that part of the world and this translates to what this translates to is I started to look at the gym and I started to say well there's lots of different variables okay what's the rain what's the altitude like what are the the the Lesser important environmental variables for example when we were choosing a gym to shoot um the program is that what you mean so yeah okay so what does an an individual have available to them right or like what long story short what's the sun of the gym and I I the the answer that I arrived at it is this this concept of ground okay and what is ground I I have it's a it's the combination of external support provided to an exercise and neurological feedback com from an exercise so pausing you here remember I'm in third grade ground is this idea that there's two would you say two branches there's neurological support and then there's physical support external support okay so external support meaning when we go to do a hack squat y I have my back support or a leg extension is that what you're talking about you're not talking about all of the things that hold you up everything that hold that holds you up that is outside of your body right y a bench a bench a preacher curl that You' put your arms on uh the back support of a leg ground yes okay so that is ground and then neurological feedback like I always give like this is one of these ones I have to give an example for people to understand more than a definition if you've ever been on the subway in New York City you can it smells the smell that's another environmental Factor but a lot of times tourists they get on and they're looking at the map and then the thing starts moving and it lurches and they get knocked all over the place and if they just had one finger on the subway pole they wouldn't get thrown around as much and so all that finger on the pole does is it provides reference of where you are in space uh relative to everything around you and it it organizes yourself in terms of knowing where your pieces are relative to each other and is if you have that information it's so much easier for you to do the task I love it yeah it's what is so fascinating about your concept of rethinking these big patterns and this idea of ground High Ground medium ground and low ground is that it's a very intellectual way of putting training together yeah I mean it is it's a very intellectual way it is which has upsides and downsides there's a lot of front-end work to get through it but like once you see it you're like oh my God like this actually again because the Glazier paper is the it is the universal theory of exercise science we pull that up the whole thing that ties everything together and so I I just you know again I've been training for 30 years and I've been around the block more times than than a couple and so I've seen every weird training style and I've seen functional training come and go and I've seen bodybuilding and weightlifting and you know Bose balls and it's like it's a like what do I do with all this stuff how do why do these things exist how can I explain their existence I I and that's what you're going to do very quickly um when yes I just started to look at like different sports just from a big picture noticing how different athletes bodies are in different sports and I I categorize Sports by ground as well saying that there are some very high ground Sports and then that there are very low ground Sports meaning support physically supported is that how you and neurological feedback so you're touching stuff to give you a sense of where you are in space and then there's objects that you're physically interacting this actually makes a lot more sense when I think about low ground High Ground would be so would High Ground be both physical touch or touching something other than yourself plus support yes would I have a question about swimming mhm with swimming it's a weird one because you're actually in water so I have a a very like under the topic of external support okay the actual the next variable under that is the degree of deformation of the of the substance that you're interacting with okay so the more deformable the substance that's supporting you the lower the ground so water is very deformable so that would be a low yeah a low ground support correct when you are designing a program is the first thing obviously we talked about your principles of hypertrophy the lifts that we all degree all we all agreed upon and then to take it another level based on your foundations you then move to High Ground medium ground low ground yep when you are choosing a high when would you choose number one what is an example of high ground yep exercises because ideally what we're doing is we're taking exercises with what we talked about was a woman who's going to the gym and we know that she needs to do a squat a high ground squat would be a hack squat because she has contact yep to tremendously supported she's supported it doesn't deform much it doesn't deform much I the neurological piece I'm not sure she touching stuff with hands Feer touching a platform so how do we Define based on um High Ground medium low ground and why would we pick is it based on skill set how are we I got to go back to finishing with the athletes to do this so my low ground athletes the lowest ground athletes I can think of are like Olympic divers and halfpipe skateboarders which is not touching really anything but being in space in the air and they're then going into water you know and so so what makes someone a great low ground athlete it's their ability to turn and Tumble through space and then what makes someone a great High Ground athlete and the highest ground sport that I can think of competitively is powerlifting but then you have other super high ground sports like playing interior line in football um and super heavyweight wrestling or or other high ground Sports because you are in contact with a heavy load yes like an another 300b dude that's lined up across from you is not an easy to deform thing okay I'm totally kidding but what makes you a great High Ground athlete is your ability to not be turned and to not be tumbled by external forces so it's exact opposite so interesting and what would make you better at being a great High Ground athlete would be being more massive and and having more skeletal muscle like you are now harder to turn and you are harder to Tumble what makes you better at being a great low ground athlete less body weight maybe that's a harder one to figure out I see I I think that there's there's weird things probably I think that coordination I think that proprioception I think uh your motor potential to be able to learn uh you know new skills and techniques and things like that but what makes you great at tumbling and turning is tricky you know it's like but I I think that ultimately we are now making this jump to the gym and I would say that that's what we care about the outcome of there's High Ground exercises and there's super low ground exercises and I think that when I when I what's the easiest way to to stimulate and grow muscle tissue High Ground exercises more support and more neurological feedback and then what would be the least likely way to grow muscle tissue super low ground exercises which would be like like you're not interacting with much stuff like you know I think that if I'm talking about a squat one of some of the highest ground squats I can think of would be a hack squat or a pendulum squat something like that uh the lowest ground squats I could think of would be like like a rear foot elevated and a TRX strap with your front foot on a bosu ball you know squat like that's there's a super deformable thing you're standing on the TRX strap is incredibly deformable it would be really hard to grow a lot of quadricep and glute tissue doing that that TRX strap RF split squat which by the way makes me think about a lot of the activities that middle-aged people choose yeah that are somewhat in the vein of what you're describing yes and then they wonder why they're not necessarily putting on muscle or changing their body yeah and it's potentially because they're choosing low ground activities I think that's really it so this to me is like the great differentiator and who should do low ground exercises well probably low ground athletes like I I try to categorize different sports by where they fall what about the general population well the general population's primarily out primary outcomes they're looking for is increasing muscle tissue the when we talking about High Ground 101 we are high ground 101 okay tell me about and really I I think basically you did unless you wanted to mention High Ground because I have a list here of low fat High muscle um I I guess I put that there but really from a body composition perspective High Ground I have hack squat pendulum Smith machine a good leg press yep these you're all high ground and if you are looking for hypertrophy you are looking for High Ground yeah you know I'm a probabilities person and I I look at it like you know if I'm doing a squat exercise the outcome that I'm looking for is I'm trying to butt yeah glutes and quads those are the target tissues you know how can we get so what would increase the probability of actually stimulating the glutes and the quads the more ground put into the exercise the more likely it will actually hit the target tissue if I put you into this rear foot elevated bosu Ball Contraption I have no idea what the target tissue is going to be on you it might be your neck from trying to stabilize it could be your qlc back like it's it's pure hey if you're super skilled and you're the most motor coordinated person on Earth it could be your quads and your glutes but from a probability standpoint it's very low you would to me like I the only people I put in the low ground and I wouldn't use the bosu ball or the TRX TR but you know I have my own variations of low ground exercises that I think are appropriate the only people that would get low ground exercises with me are low ground athletes who have started with high ground exercises learn the fundamentals exactly what you were talking about and then I I progress them by stripping away ground until they land in the spectrum of ground for the for their for their needs it's really intelligent and I believe that this translates over to the progression of a everyday person MH and here's why is that we all want more muscle at least if you guys don't I would put that on your Christmas list even if people say they don't they actually do everybody does yeah um except for you you don't need any more muscle that's not true at all by the way uh hi ground activity high probability of hypertrophy yes friends you're not going to get bulky unless your Pat Davidson or Don saladino just not going to happen choosing those and then actually thinking about the progression of becoming a more skilled human and this just my perspective of then removing more ground going to medium than going to low ground there is a potential that you can be more skilled at whether it's rotational movements or functionality type training or movements and and I think it's very it's a very unique and valuable way to think about things I think it's the only logical way to actually make decisions about exercise selection I I think that that like you know we all have our little niche in the in the world of this thing my Niche is is exercise selection that's actually what I what my whole system is based on it is an exercise selection algorithm because exercise selection is the Avenue into specificity specificity determines what changes and I just tried to figure out a system to actually land you in the appropriate shoot for you to pick the right exercise to change the right thing and I just like my enemy in the world is arbitrary decision-making and I think it's so rampant and below the rate radar that people don't even see it and people make egregious mistakes with exercise selection and it's completely arbitrary I just like this thing this guy I know likes this thing I'm doing this because the girl that teaches this class has the butt that I that that that's what I want my butt to look like she does this thing so it doesn't make any sense you know if any other industry operated this way it would be shut down immediately but exercise has gotten away with it for so long because there's never been a unified approach to actually uh categorizing it there's no thread that ties it together and that's what I wanted to create which is extraordinary in the way that you're creating a system of classification and execution that is data driven yeah and not arbitrary it's almost as if it's a again it's an algorithm and we have that in medicine somebody gets pneumonia here's your first line treatment right here if they're allergic to this here's your second second line treatment that doesn't exist for exercise physiology it almost does because what's what exists is we do have a pretty good knowledge of the dose and the titration of the dose okay but you still have to pick the right medicine exactly and that's where I think people were were were dropping the ball and um and I think that like in the beginning you can get away with a lot as a beginner exerciser like even if you make a slightly wrong selection on the on the exact right thing your reps could be eating potato chips from the sofa of moving your arm and you're probably right you draw as long as you're having enough protein and but like once we get past that point now it's like you know if and again it's also like what's the what do you have a framework to think this topic through and I just don't think that existed and when you when people go to you so if you get messages from this discussion or from the program that we have do people call you or download software is there a manual for putting in X and getting out y yeah well I started it with just I I have a book that I wrote on it and it's it's called a coach a coach's guide to optimizing movement um it's sold through the Renaissance periodization uh website incredible we we'll link everything and part of it was like I think Mike is so good at creating you know he created a a a an algorithm for volume and intensity for progression like quantitative progression and and I really wanted to create an algorithm for the kind of the the nebulous weird side of it of qualitative and exercise selection and who should get what thing that then ultimately you put into a quantitative algorithm you know like how many like you know we we were going to get into some of the things about like how many sets and how many reps reserve and how much progression week to week and beginners intermediates Advanced and and all like that is Mike's world you know like he has laid that out with perfection and I I just felt like hey there's this whole other realm over here because you know to me it's like there's specificity and overload as like the two big key principles and he nailed overload as hard as anybody possibly could from the point of organizing it to drive muscle adaptation and I wanted to nail specificity as hard as someone could so that you had a an idea about where to start with all humans that want a resistance train and then depending upon the different goals that they have how to systematically move them on a trajectory towards doing exactly the right versions of these exercises to support the end outcomes that they want it's really smart it's really meaningful work and um we're going to do our part to bring it to the world Pat Davidson I'm so grateful to have you to have you as a friend and someone who I can count on to talk about things science muscle hypertrophy and also count on to discuss it in a very intelligent way that makes it translatable and usable and at the end of the day fast forwards people's ability to get the alternate outcome that they're looking far well thank you you know it's very mutual um you know I just I appreciate the opportunity to be able to come on here and and um you know I just think that what you're doing is really some of the most important work that can be done from a societal standpoint of being able to really impact and change people's lives and you know having anything to do with assisting is is really just like you know I I I'm grateful for the opportunity w we love having you and we're going to link where to find you you're obviously on Instagram Dr Pat Davidson where else we'll link your website and your book and and all the things so thank you so much thank you [Music] [Music] oh [Music]