Stronger With Less

Chapters

• 0:00 Host Intro And Sponsor Shoutouts
• 0:46 Why Listeners Tune In While Training
• 1:25 Framing The Science: Physiology Over Psychology
• 1:48 New ACSM Article On Strength Volume
• 2:31 Minimums Beat Myths: You Need Less
• 3:41 What Volume Really Means In Strength
• 5:34 Single Set To Failure: Pros And Cons
• 6:45 The Three-Set Rule And RIR Explained
• 8:11 High Volume Limits And Overtraining Risks
• 10:17 Major Movement Patterns That Matter
• 12:19 A 15-Minute Whole-Body Template
• 14:09 Quality Over Quantity And Closing Notes
• 14:54 Final Thanks And Sponsor CTAs

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to There Is a Method to the Madness. My name is Rob Maxwell and I'm an exercise physiologist and personal trainer. I am the owner of Maxwell's fitness programs and I've been in business since 1994. The purpose of this podcast is to get to the real deal of what really works and most importantly why things work. Hence the name, There is a Method to the Madness. Before I get to today's show, I want to thank Jonathan and Lynn Gilden of the Gilden Group at Realty Pros. They are committed to providing the highest level of customer service in home sales. Why don't you give them a shout and figure out what your home is worth? 386-451-2412. Alright, good morning, everybody, or good afternoon, good evening, whatever time you're listening to this. I had a uh former student tell me that they love listening to my podcast while they work out, and I think that's good. I think that's a great time to listen to it, or maybe in the car on the way to the gym, just to kind of maybe get a little pearl of wisdom or something to get you a little more motivated. So I always really appreciate that. I love when former students tell me that they've uh found it and um are listening, and I think that's pretty cool. So, you know, the purpose again of the method to the Madness is to talk about the science involved and then why it's applicable and how it works, and that could be the science of physiology. That's probably where I center a lot of it, but then also the um science of human behavior, so psychology, and then we talk about how that works. Today I'm going to keep it more to the physiology side and talk about a recent article that comes from the American College of Sports Medicine, and it's a uh periodical that I get for being a member, and uh it's um, you know, it comes out, I think it comes out every two months, something like that. And it's usually got some, well, it's always got some good things in it. This one was really, really good, had some great articles. And the one I'm gonna talk about today, it was uh given all of the science behind why people don't have to spend as much time with their strength training as they think they do. Now, I would say if you put this out 20 years ago, people would be in shock almost. There was a lot of like um, you know, just almost like exasperation from people when I I've been preaching this for a really, really long time that there is a minimum we need to reach, and then we can go from there. And the minimum isn't nearly as much as people think. But like I said, 20 years ago, people were like, you mean I don't have to work out every day and do all these different muscle groups and go to the gym and every day. And when we're talking strength training, the answer is no. When we're talking really any kind of working out, the answer is no. There's minimums to both strength training and cardio, and there's minimums to flexibility, and typically none of it, well, no, all the time, not typically, is nearly as much as people think that they need to do. So I'm focusing on strength training because still only 20% of our population is strength training enough to get benefits. And let me tell you, the enough isn't that much, and that's what this article was all about. It was talking about the uh, you know, the differences between say high volume routines and then what they used to call hit routines, like real high intensity training. So basically multiple set versus single set, and those are like the extremes when we're talking quantity of strength training, because we never measure strength training in time, right? I say right, like you should know that, but kind of think you should know that. If you've worked out long enough, you do know that. Like, what does an hour at the gym actually mean, right? It could be totally just slammed of doing sets for a minute and resting 15 seconds and then doing another set for the full hour, which they would have to kind of peel you off the floor if you did a strength training workout like that, or it could be 20 sets done in 60 minutes, which that's a lot of rest in between. So time at the gym really doesn't matter a whole lot. It's the the volume is going to come down to how many sets you do, how many reps you do. That's really the key with it there. So when we talk volume and strength training, or the how much, we're talking frequency, we're talking number of sets. Not really even talking reps because the difference is marginal. Now, reps matter to an extent, but they don't really matter when it comes to volume. Volume and strength training really comes down to frequency and sets. And we've studied it enough to know. All right. So there are some studies that suggest that if you are doing just a single set of a single muscle group exercise two times a week, you're getting enough stimulus to get results. Now, those are the high-intensity training folks that have been around forever since the Nautilus days. Um, I tell you what, I've experimented a lot with that with people through the years, especially people that are really, really, really on a time crunch. And you do get stronger. I mean, there's just no way around it. Problem with that is those sets have to be taken to outright failure. And not everybody can or wants to do that. You think, oh, everybody can. It's like, uh, not really. I mean, it's it's really hard. I mean, sometimes the brain tells us we're done three or four reps before we actually are. So, you know, it takes a lot of experience to be able to work around that, and not everybody has the time to put in that kind of experience. So that's kind of tough doing those single set routines like that to full intensity. That's kind of tough. So then the study went on to show, and I'm just, this isn't new, this is not new to me at all, but I'm just glad they're covering it again, getting it out there to all the trainers so they talk. The studies went on to say, you know, if you're doing three sets of a muscle group two to three times per week, you are really doing your minimum. So the bottom line is that's not a lot of work. If I mean, when I say not a lot of work, it's not a lot of volume, right? Work is going to come down to how much effort we put in. The good news is from the three to the one, is that you can get away with more what we call RIR reps in reserve, meaning you can keep it to like a two or a three if you're getting in those three sets per muscle group, which means that let's say you can do 15 reps if you want to outright failure, like you're at 13 and it's burning and you're barely keeping form, and you're at 14 and it's burning even more and you're barely keeping form, and then finally reach 15 with all you have in good form, that would be like 15 to failure. So reps in reserve would mean that if you had a three, you can go to 12 and stop there, and you most likely had enough muscle fiber recruitment to do the job. So, you know, that gives us a minimum there. That if think three, think the three rule. So if we're doing three sets per muscle group, not per exercise, per muscle group, this is the minimum, and we're keeping it between a three in reserve or greater, and we're doing that two to three times per week, we're doing enough to get the benefits. Now, if you look at a high volume routine, which there's nothing wrong with it if you have the time and you're making gains, like I always tell people, it's like, is what you're doing working? If it's working, keep doing it. So if you're going to the gym five days a week and you're strength training five days a week and you're getting benefits, meaning that you notice your muscularity is better. You're filling out your shirts more if you're a guy, or you're feeling, you know, you're feeling better about yourself no matter what gender you are, whatever. If you're getting stronger, then it is working. All right, so don't change anything. But what the high volume folks will do is there might be like nine to ten sets per muscle group per workout. So a lot of results or a lot of studies have shown that like 20 sets per muscle group per week is almost like the maximum that somebody can get benefits without overtraining, you know, not and not taking steroids, because if you're taking steroids, you're gonna get away with a lot more training. So pretty much like 20 sets is the outright max. So if somebody's doing, say, 10 sets of legs on a Tuesday, and then they do 10 sets on a Friday, that would be like the maximum. And I know some folks that have for years have done even more than that. Well, the studies are saying they're probably over training. And again, a lot of it comes down to the intensity that you put in there, and that's the rep and reserve thing. Again, you gotta always take that into consideration because if you're not recruiting the muscle fibers almost completely, this set really doesn't count. We would call that a warm-up set. So, to kind of recap and tell you what all this means is the studies have confirmed that you don't have to spend nearly as much time in the gym as you think you do to get stronger because it comes down to making sure that you are training all the major movements of the body, so the major muscle groups. If we're doing forms of squats, that means, and when I say forms of squats, that could be regular squats, that could be dumbbell squats, that could be leg press, which is a machine version of a squat, that could be a split squat, which is really just an isolatal version of that. Um, if you're doing any form of squat, if you're doing upper body pushing, like push-ups or chest press or bench press or dumbbell chest press, then you're working your upper body pushing muscles, which are your pecs, your shoulders, and your triceps. So if you're doing that regularly for your workouts, two to three times a week. And the other major movement, if we're doing upper body pulling, such as pull down, such as row, such as high row, such as reverse fly, then we're working our back and we're working our biceps. If we do that regularly, two to three times a week, and then the other major motion would be a hinge movement. That's where we kind of bend forward at the spine, but not really. You got to push your butt all the way back on these. It's called a hinge movement, and that really works your core, your rector spinae, your hamstrings, your glutes, very, very important areas for people to work. So if you're doing that on a regular basis, then we're hitting the right muscle groups, we're getting stronger. Now, to throw in the minimum. If we're doing, say, three sets for those areas. Let's say you go to the gym and you're doing, you know, you're again, you're you're a minimalist, which is fine, and it's not worse than a maximalist. It's important to understand that it's just different. Some people are on tight time constraints and they have to realize don't have to do nearly as much. But let's say you are, so you can technically get away with like nine sets at the gym and still get benefits when you go. You can do something like a set of squats, again, correct R-I-R within three or greater, and then say a set of leg press, which is a machine version of a squat, and then say a set of split squats, boom, then you can go to upper body push, and you could do some push-ups, and then maybe you do the chest press machine, then maybe you do some dumbbell press or overhead press, and then you can do some pulling motions, like maybe you're you like to work out with your own body weight, so you can do pull-ups, or you can do pull downs, or you can do a row, and you do three sets of versions of those. I mean, boom, you're covering everything. Throw in a set of crunches and hinges for the core, and you've worked your whole body. I mean, you literally could do all of that in easily 15 minutes, you know. Now, I'm not a big believer in rushing things by any means. I was kidding with one of my um clients this morning who's going to become a trainer here, Miss Casey. She's a phenomenal story. She's going to take her certification test, and uh she we're going to bring her on board, which I'm very excited about. So, anyway, she was uh kind of losing focus a little bit. I said, So, where did you feel that? She goes, Oh, you know, I wasn't paying attention. I teased her a little bit about like losing focus, which she can, we all can. And she brought it back to focus on the next set we did. And she said, I felt that more in my quads. I said, Oh, there you go. So I'm a big believer in quality, but the point is, is it won't take much to do it. It all comes down to quality, and now we know we just need enough quantity. Okay. Hope that helps. If you need any further help with this, email me, text me. I can give you the physiology and why this works and why you don't have to be at the gym for an hour. You know, cardio is a different story, but we can still get away with a lot less than we think as far as duration goes. All right. So I will talk to everybody soon and see you next time. All right, thank you everybody for listening to today's show. I really appreciate it. I want to remind you to please hit automatic download. It really helps me and it helps the show. And now I'd like to thank Overhead Door of Daytona Beach, the area's premier garage door company. They have the best product and the best service. I personally vouch for Jeff and Zach Hawk, the owners. They are great. They're going to get you exactly what you need. So if you have any garage door needs, give them a shout at 386-222-3165. And now I'm very excited to add another sponsor. Procharge Liquid Protein Enhancer has joined the team. And let me tell you, they are a great product. I pop one after a workout. 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