← ChooseFI | Financial Independence Podcast
ChooseFI | Financial Independence Podcast
Masterclass on Muscle Building | Dean Turner | Ep 516
01:18:03
In this episode: building muscle for health, sacropenia, consistency and proper form, routines, and recovery. This episode is a deep dive into muscle-building strategies, with actionable advice for beginners and experienced fitness enthusiasts alike....
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- [00:00]
Brad
Hello and welcome to Choose a Fight. Today on the show, we have a follow up to my Healthiest Year Ever episode, which was episode 480, where I had my personal trainer, Dean Turner on. We asked for a lot of community feedback and questions and boy, did we get it. And this is the natural follow up to that episode where I'm viewing this as a masterclass on getting started with muscle building. It's so important for all of us as we get older to really, really prioritize keeping up our strength and building muscle, because it is just an absolutely critical part of health and longevity and living the lives that we want to as we age. And we are all aging no matter how old we are now. So this is of absolute critical importance. So we talk through that and we're going to go through questions that you sent in. Dean really dives into it. You're going to love this episode with that. Welcome to Choose Up. Dean, my friend. Welcome back to the show.
- [01:04]
Dean Turner
Brad. Thanks for having me on. Pleasure to be here.
- [01:07]
Brad
Yeah, this should be fun. So, okay, this is round two. We did the first episode, which is shocking, was all the way back in March, that was episode 480, and it was the update on my healthiest year ever. So in it we went over a little bit of the methodology that I've been using, basically working with you hand in hand as my personal trainer for the last almost two years now. But it was a little mishmash of like, okay, here's some updates on my healthiest year ever and et cetera, et cetera. But a lot of people wrote in with specific questions about, hey, Brad, okay, this is all well and good, you've experimented, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but what are you doing to build muscle? And I think we're all aging right? Whether we like it or not, no matter how old, no matter how young, we are all aging. And like we said in episode four, 80, there's this age related muscle loss which is called sarcopenia. And we need to constantly fight against that. And building muscle is a critical part of living a healthy life. And I think part of this entire financial independence mindset is optimizing life. And I think all of us, if we're honest with ourselves, we want to be able to do things into our 60s, 70s, 80s and beyond, like lift up a grandkid or walk up and down flights of stairs, or put a suitcase and an overhead bin. We don't want to be unable to do things. And I think that is part of why muscle building is so, so important. For longevity purposes, just for living a healthy life. But like we talked about also, let's be perfectly honest and say we all want to look good too. And I think no matter who you are, building muscle is going to help that. So there are lots of different benefits and we could probably spend two hours talking about the benefits of, of muscle building. But let's go into very specifically your programming and your methodology. Let's try to talk through like at a high level what it entails. And I know it can get very refined and very detailed, but let's try to stay at like the maybe the 5,000 foot view, not the 40,000, but the 5,000 foot view here.
- [03:17]
Dean Turner
Yeah, so you have to have kind of your general structure as far as your schedule goes. That's one of the most important things. So if somebody you know only has three days to work out, obviously they can't do a five day workout plan or four day workout plan or whatever. So your schedule is super important. How much time you have to devote to each session is super important. And then after that it's a little bit of like a fill in the blanks type deal. So we have a number of options available to us as far as splits go. Like if somebody does a five day, if somebody's going to train five days, they could do a, you know, upper, lower, push, pull legs. Right. And I'm just talking resistance training here. If somebody is going to train four days, they could do an upper, lower, upper, lower. That's what me and Brad do together. That's actually what I do personally as well and have for a number of years. Now if somebody's going to do three days, they could do an upper, lower rotation where they could have one week they do upper, lower, upper and the following week they do lower, upper, lower. They could also do a full body, full body, full body. So like a full body A full body, B full body C, on non consecutive days, for example, like Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So there's a number of options available. So once you have kind of this split picked out, and it's not even just scheduling based, it's also like kind of goal dependent too. But once you have that picked out, you kind of start to fill in the blanks. Like I said, exercise selection is a big key. The exercises that you select have to be in line with your goal. What Brad and I are mostly going to be talking about here and what we train kind of specifically for is muscle growth, you know, enhancing body composition, which secondarily tends to improve overall physical fitness and health. And wellbeing and whatnot. So you've got your split, you've got your exercises. Then you kind of assign your workload in terms of the number of sets you're going to do per exercise. You kind of assign the rep range that you're going to be in. And then you get to it. And when you get to it, there's an emphasis on form, technique, executing the lifts properly. There's an emphasis on taking sets close in proximity to failure. So one of the big keys that Brad and I will kind of want to hit on here bang home is it's not enough to just go in the gym and lift to a certain rep count arbitrarily. Your sets have to be ending as a result of the target muscle failing or approaching failure. So if you get handed an exercise regimen that's muscle growth or hypertrophy, that's another word for muscle growth focus. And it says, you know, do four sets of ten of this exercise. You can just go ahead and scrap that. That program right away. That's kind of like a telltale. Brad can attest to this. I always give him a rep range to fall in, so he knows, hey, I want to be between 6 and 10, or 6 and 12, or 5 and 10 or whatever. So I'm going to pick a weight that lands me there, and then it's going to challenge me in that rep range. And I'm going to stop at, you know, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10 again because the target musculature failed or was at least approaching failure. Those are kind of like the overarching principles there. And then it's kind of like wave through the weeks. You do not need to be arbitrarily changing exercises on some kind of predetermined basis. The goal is to progress through the weeks. If you're programmed properly, progression will happen naturally because it's just the result of adaptations accruing. So if, for example, you have a machine press, a seated chest press machine program as one of your exercises, you have just say two or three sets programmed. Week one, you go in, you can do a hundred pounds for 10 reps, and you could not do an 11th rep. So 10 reps is your capacity, a hundred pounds. And say next week you go in and you can do, you know, 11 reps with that weight, and the following week you can do 12 reps with that weight. And then as a result of you being able to hit 12 reps, you increase the load from 100 pounds to 105 pounds. And then you rinse and repeat the process and maybe you get 105 pounds for 7 reps. Then the following week you get it for 8, the following week you get it for 9, following week you get it for 10. The following week 11, following week 12. That is you demonstrating progressive overload, which is basically a reactive feedback mechanism which is telling you whether or not your program is working as designed. Progressive overload is not something you can force. It's something that happens as a byproduct of you accruing adaptations, a byproduct of you executing a well designed plan properly and consistently. So that's kind of the overarching theme. That's what gives us the feedback and tells us whether or not it's working. And if it's not working, then there are a number of ways that we need to diagnose why it's not working and then kind of go from there. A program could not be working for a number of reasons. It could not be working because it's a terribly written program, or it could not be working because you're not getting enough sleep, right? You're not recovering between sessions. It could not be working because your diet isn't on point and you're not recovering between sessions. So there's a myriad of reasons which is quite problematic for me as someone who handles a high volume of clients and sometimes does run into that problem. And it's like, ah, how are we going to diagnose this? We're going to have a number of questions and try and figure it out slowly over time with trial and error and whatnot. But yeah, that's the overarching theme. That's kind of how the programming works. I think maybe, Brad, we should touch on how muscle's built. Potentially one of the questions from the listeners.
- [08:14]
Brad
Yeah, good call, Dean. So we actually had two questions come in that are tied together. So the first, and I'm going to paraphrase here, was basically, I've heard that muscle is built by tearing and rebuilding the muscle. Is that true? And if not, how is muscle built? And then the second question was, if you go into the gym and you lift moderate weights for a lot of reps and then just stop at some random number you made up, what is actually happening? Are you building muscle? Is this even valuable? So yeah, Dean, again, these questions at face value don't sound like they're tied together, but I know we both think that they are. So yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts on these two.
- [08:58]
Dean Turner
Okay, so yeah, let's start with the first one, I've heard that muscle is built by tearing and rebuilding. Is that true? If not, how is muscle built? So we'll try and keep this as kind of simple as possible because it is a nuanced answer. No, that is not how muscle is built. That was believed and is still actually spewed in universities across the United States, unfortunately. But what we know now is this. Here is how muscle is built. So you need two things in order to set off a signaling cascade that ultimately drives muscle growth in the body. Those two things are one, muscle activation and two, a slow shortening velocity. So what that means is this, okay, when you go in the gym and you're doing a set of resistance exercise, we'll use a hack squat, for example, and you could use a barbell squat, whatever variation of squat, right? So let's say you're going to do a hack squat and you're shooting for like 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 reps or something like that, right? So you get first rep, second rep, third rep, fourth rep, fifth rep, sixth rep, and then like on the seventh rep, it really starts to slow down and the eighth reps even slower on your way up. Now you're trying to move that weight as fast as possible on the way up, but it is going slow, right? You're really fighting that weight. You get the eighth rep and then you go down for a ninth and you get it. But you like fought the whole way up. It took you like 4, 5, 6, 7 seconds. Even though you were trying to move the weight as fast as possible, you had two things going on there. One, you were giving a high degree of effort, and provided you picked an exercise and set up for the exercise correctly, you will get what's known as motor unit recruitment. High threshold motor unit recruitment, which is basically a lot of muscle activation in the target musculature. And then that is coupled with an involuntary slowdown in the concentric speed. So the speed of you raising the weight, right? And the big key there is it's happening involuntarily because you're trying, you're giving all your effort, but it's just slowing down because it's so hard. So when you pair those two things, you have a high degree of motor unit recruitment, which results in a high degree of muscle activation in the target musculature. And then you get a slow shortening velocity. What happens in the actual muscle cell is the component parts, actin and myosin. Those are just the component parts of muscle. You don't really need to know Anything other than that, they experience what's known as cross bridging formation. That slowing rep speed, driving the cross bridging formation between the actin and myosin results in mechanical tension being detected. That mechanical tension that's detected in the body then kind of sets off a signaling cascade which will then drive muscle growth. So muscle growth is literally a product of a signaling cascade which results from you experiencing sufficient mechanical tension. You have to experience a sufficient amount. There's kind of a threshold because you couldn't probably just do one set a week or something like that and set it off. You probably need two or three or four or something like that. My money would be on, for most muscle groups, you need somewhere in the neighborhood of six sets. It could be a give or take per muscle group per week in order to really drive muscle growth, because again, you not only need to experience the mechanical tension, but you need a sufficient amount of the mechanical tension. So that's how muscle is built. So it's not built by, you know, tearing down and rebuilding. The second question is, if you go into the gym and lift moderate weights for a lot of reps and just stop at some number, what is actually happening? Is this valuable? So it's valuable insofar as you're just trying to maybe accrue some general fitness and you're just trying to kind of maintain the existing, like musculature and strength that you have. It's better than sitting on the couch. But in terms of actually driving new muscle growth, actually driving adaptations, actually improving your fitness level, no, it's not of great value. And the reason is you need to be taking your sets in close proximity to failure because you need a high level of effort coupled with a slow and involuntary slowdown and concentric rep speed. And if you aren't taking your sets close to proximity failure and you're just stopping in an arbitrary number, you're not going to have those two things. So it's not all that worthwhile. Again, is it better than sitting on the couch? Yes, I definitely recommend that rather than just, you know, watching Netflix for five hours on end or whatever. But if you're going to go in the gym, you might as well make it worth it. And honestly, you're better off going in the gym and spending 20 to 30 minutes on five, six or seven sets, actually taking them in close proximity to failure. Then you are spending 60, 75 or 90 minutes and you don't take a single set in close proximity to failure. You actually just stop at arbitrary rep numbers. You Never actually really challenge yourself or push yourself. You can get more out of a 30 minute workout if programmed correctly. And if executed correctly, then you could out of a 90 minute workout even if it's programmed correctly, but you don't execute it properly. And execution comes down to again having proper techniques, setting up for exercise properly, and actually giving the appropriate effort level and taking your sets close in proximity to failure.
- [13:45]
Brad
Yeah, that is fascinating, Dean. So that actually ties into a question that came in from Eric. And part of his question essentially said, hey, I want to enjoy my second half of life and be healthy for the kids. If I can commit 20 to 30 minutes four times per week, what is the 80, 20 to use that time most effectively? And it's interesting because I think most people would intuitively think because they see everybody at the gym walking out full of sweat and like they just crushed themselves on the StairMaster or whatever for 20 or 30 minutes if that's all they have. You're saying, hey, maybe if you only have 20 or 30 minutes, do four, five, six sets, but do them for real, right? Do them to this point where again, there's that involuntary slowdown. We're repeating this over and over and over again, this episode, because it's so important, Dean. And I think this is the fundamental piece that I tell everybody is we are all so used to just arbitrarily going into the gym and picking up just some random weight. We come up with a number in our head similar to when you were joking before about, hey, if you read a program that says, do four sets at 10 reps, throw the program out because it's absolute junk. It's the same. We all have the program in our head of, hey, I'm going to pick up this set of dumbbells for, I don't know, curls, and I'm going to do 12 reps. Nothing, probably for most people because they have no idea what weight to pick up. They're probably comfortably doing 12 reps. And they get to 12, they put it down and maybe they wait 30 seconds and they pick them back up and they do another 12. But they never had that mechanical tension. They never had that involuntary slowdown. They probably could have done 20 or 30 reps, right? But they just stopped because they hit this arbitrary number. And I think that, to me, if there's one takeaway for people for this entire episode and they're going to be 57 takeaways, let's be clear. But if you take away only one thing, try to be in, let's say a 5 to 10 rep range, maybe 6 to 12 on each set. And if you can't get to 5 or 6 reps, it's too heavy, you need to go down. But realistically for most people, if you get to 12 or more reps and that last rep or two have not slowed down involuntarily, if the first rep looks no different from the 12th rep, okay, you pick two letter weight, no harm, no foul. You just next set, you pick up a heavier weight and you ultimately are just trying to get in that range of 6 to 12. And realistically, with perfect form, the last couple of reps should slow down involuntarily. If you just do that one thing, you are going to see more progress than you would have almost invariably otherwise, just doing what you've been doing with no real benefit for the last couple years. So now, Dina, I'm sure you have a bunch of things that you would add to that, obviously, but that to me is the high level thing I always pass along to people. Those last couple reps, they have to slow down. There has to be that mechanical tension.
- [16:51]
Dean Turner
Yeah, one thing you said there that I want to bang home here because I think people could take this too far practically, because I've seen this taken too far, practically. So you said that your last rep should look different than your first rep, right? That's half true. Okay, so here's the half true part. Your last rep should be considerably slower than your first rep on the way up. But if I took a video of you, right, and then I had somebody edit it so that the speed was no different, it should look the same. So the only difference should be the speed. Your positioning, you moving into a body position where you compensate is not something you should have happened, right? So your last rep should look a lot slower on the way up during the raising phase of the movement, right. And again involuntarily. But in terms of your technique, it should look no different than your first rep. And that's an absolute key because our goal is to take sets in close proximity to failure, Right. Pick good exercises, take the sets in close proximity to failure, but keep your form on point too. So it's not that you're failing, right. And you're flailing all about and you're in a way different position than when you started, right? Like people bench press on a barbell bench press and they're butt like six feet in the air. It's like, oh, no, come on. You have to fail with form tight. So that's an absolute Key there. So I just wanted to kind of bang on that point. So you want to be working hard. You want to be taking your sets close in proximity to failure. But when we define failure, we define failure as task failure. So we basically set the task out. Hey, the task is I'm going to take the barbell off the rack. Just say it's like a barbell bench press or something. I'm going to bring it down in my chest and I'm going to touch my chest. I'm going to lift it all the way up with my arms locked out while keeping points of contact with my feet on the floor, my butt on the bench, and my upper back on the bench. There should be no compensation occurring that's allowing you to extend sets. The first rep should look exactly the same as the last rep from a technique standpoint, but it should look different from a speed standpoint. It should slow down involuntarily. Want to bang that home, too, because technique is so key. Form is so key.
- [18:54]
Brad
I am so glad that you said that. And, yeah, the technique is critical. So I think a lot of us, and you see this with most people at the gym really don't know what we're doing. And it's similar to personal finance. We never learn this stuff. We shouldn't beat ourselves up about it. But the beautiful part is you can learn, right? There are YouTube videos. Dean, how many videos did you send me on every single exercise, right? You send me at least one, maybe multiple YouTube videos, and they're short. They're 15, 30, 45 seconds on. Okay, look, here's the exact machine you have at your gym for the seated dip machine. All you have to do is just Google, right? Each and every one of us. If you're listening to this and you go to your gym, you're going to see there's going to be a different manufacturer for X machine and Y machine. Just Google that name and look at a couple videos and just try to understand what is the exact way to do this. Similar with whatever it is, a dumbbell curl. We all think we know that, but, Dean, how many times do you go to the gym and see people just doing wacky stuff like swinging weights and bringing other body parts? Like, I've seen bizarro things where I can't tell if somebody's doing a row or a tricep exercise or some other wacky thing? Like, I literally don't know what they're doing other than that they are moving away in space, basically. I don't know if they're working on anything. I have no clue. I don't think they do either, but somebody probably taught them that 30 years ago. But now we have YouTube.
- [20:28]
Dean Turner
The average gym goer never ceases to amaze me in terms of their ability to screw up exercise technique or form or whatever. Execution, I guess you'd say. I think that that's actually a little bit of a nice segue here into one of the perks of machine based training, which is people can screw up their technique on a machine, but usually not to the extent that they can screw up their technique on like a free weight movement, because they're usually locked into a fixed movement pattern. They can usually only move like, you know, one dimensionally, I suppose, you know, back and forth. They can't move side to side or up and down. Like if you take a barbell squat, for example, and compare it to a hack squat with a barbell squat. When a barbell is on my back, right, I can move up and down, I can move forward and back and I can move side to side, right? So I can move three dimensionally with a hack squat. When I'm on there, the hack squats on rails, right? So it's just up and down. So if I put my feet in the right position and I go to the proper depth, there's really almost no way that I can screw it up. And I say that with a little bit of trepidation because people still find some creative ways, but it definitely provides a larger margin of safety in terms of ability to screw up. But yeah, to your point, people screw up exercises all the time. And it's kind of one of those things where like, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure in terms of just looking up YouTube videos, making sure that your technique is on point. That way you're actually getting a lot out of the exercise and you're not wasting sessions, weeks, months, years where you're not executing these exercises properly. And as a result, you're not getting, you know, the outcome you want from a strength standpoint, from aesthetics, you know, physique standpoint, body composition standpoint, et cetera. So, yeah, the YouTube videos are key. I always feel like the best thing to do if, you know, nothing is to reference multiple videos on the same topic or same exercise, and then you can kind of pick up on the similarities. And with regards to, like, exercise selection and exercise execution, it's generally better to opt for videos that are simpler videos that you have a good angle on visually, and then your goal is usually just to Emulate what you see. Because sometimes when you get a video that's supposed to be helpful and it's like three or four minutes long on one exercise and somebody's giving you 45 different cues to think about, it can actually end up just screwing you up. So if someone says, oh, you need to think about your chest being tall on this and your butt being planted here and this, that and the other thing, all of a sudden you're going into the exercise and you're thinking about 35 different things and you're not even. You don't even remember what you saw. Whereas if you just watch two or three videos, quick, 15, 20, 30 seconds. Hey, sit on the machine. Extend your leg. Hey, sit on the machine, grab the handles, press out or whatever, and you try and emulate what you see, you're probably going to do a better job with that, especially if you reference multiple. And another thing, if you film yourself doing it, you can kind of put those videos side to side. You can juxtapose those videos against one another, and you can say, hey, how does my technique look in comparison to this person's? And technique is kind of like jump shots in basketball. It's not universal. You don't have to look exactly like someone else because your skeletal structure, your anthropometry is probably not the exact same as someone else. And you might be using a mildly different machine in terms of, like, how it was manufactured, but it should look reasonably close to a well executed video that you could find on YouTube.
- [23:41]
Brad
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And you said maybe about five minutes ago, you're talking about the hack squad originally, and you said the rep should be as fast as possible on the way up. So I wanted to drill into that. What should a rep look like? So now we talked about the Republic throughout a set towards the end. The on the way up part, yeah, will slow down. But now what about lowering the weight? A lot of people just like randomly drop a weight or like very quickly, like dive bomb. Dive bomb. Perfect way of putting it. What should a rep look like on rep 1? And what should a rep look like as you're approaching that. That failure point?
- [24:22]
Dean Turner
So the lowering phase of a movement should be more or less identical throughout the entire set. So that's called the eccentric portion of the phase. So we're talking about dynam repetitions here where you go down and go up. So when the weight is lowering right against gravity, it should be controlled about two to three seconds. Now, the reason you want to control it is mostly to Standardize form and guard against injury. But you're probably not actually getting a whole bunch of stimulus out of that portion of the movement, which is also a misconception. People believe that you do get a lot of stimulus out of eccentrics. You don't. You get a lot of stimulus out of the concentric, the raising face. When you experience the involuntary slowdown and mechanical tensions detected as a result of cross bridging again between actin and myosin. So universally, whether it's rep, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, say it's a set of 12. So 9, 10, 11, 12. You're eccentric. So when you're lowering the weight should be about 3ish seconds, could be 2, could be 4. Somewhere in that neighborhood you're concentric. I'm going to read you this. So there's a guy by the name of, I think his name is Matt Domney. I don't have his exact handle up here, but he's, I guess, powerlifting bodybuilding coach, whatever, on Instagram. And he put up a post yesterday. And I actually have this in my Twitter drafts and I'm going to release it at some point. So I love when my Twitter drafts help me. I have a Twitter draft for everything. He said you should be putting as much effort into the concentric, so the raising phase as needed. Tempos are great. So what he means by that is tempos where you actually count the specific number like 1, 2, 3, 4 and then 1, 2 or something like that. Tempos are great, but intentionally slowing down your concentric is not going to help you recruit more muscle. That is absolutely a fact because you should be moving the weight as explosively as you can on the way up while remaining under control. But it should again slow down involuntarily. He said slow them down if you're hurt. So he means voluntarily, right? Not involuntary. If you're healthy, keep them fast and controlled. So you should be under control, but you should move it fairly rapidly. And I wrote this voluntarily, slowing down concentric rep speed. So voluntarily. So you're doing this by choice, literally reduces motor unit recruitment or muscle activation. Right? Because you're not applying as much effort against the weights. This is a major no, no. If training for hypertrophy, which again means muscle growth, control eccentrics for about 3 seconds and act explosively but still under control on concentric. So I'm going to repeat that. Control eccentrics, that's the lowering phase for about three seconds and act explosively but still under control on concentrics. That's the raising phase. Any slowdown you experienced during the concentric phase of the movement should happen. Wait for it involuntarily. This is everything you need to know about rep cadence for muscle growth.
- [27:03]
Brad
That is so huge. So right. I hope everybody really understands this. This is why we are spending so much time on this. It is critical. This is the most important thing you're going to learn about going to the gym this entire year, maybe your entire life. It is absolutely critical. And Dean, when you finish a set like this, right, where those last couple reps are slowing down involuntarily, you are getting to a point where we call that reps in reserve. The number of like mental reps that you believe with perfect form, right? That's the critical part. You're never compromising on form. You're at either a 0 or 1 reps in reserve that with perfect form, you can't do another one or you can only do one more. So now you finish your set.
- [27:43]
Dean Turner
I already know where you're going with this.
- [27:45]
Brad
Are you coming back in 30 seconds?
- [27:47]
Dean Turner
You are not coming back in 30 seconds. Absolutely not. The base, the floor. If you're somebody who's pressed for time, you don't have a ton of time to work out. This actually could maybe go to Eric's question where he was like, hey, I got 20 to 30 minutes four times a week. The floor is about two minutes. But really, Brad, what do we prefer? We really prefer three or three plus minutes. And that's really to augment subsequent set performance more than anything. So you could actually just like literally ab test this more or less. You could go in the gym today, you could pick an exercise. Let's pick the hack squat, for example. Pick a weight that's difficult for you for 8, 9, 10 reps. Let's say you get a 9th rep and it's 0rer. So you could not have done a 10th rep. Take 30 seconds and go try it again, right? And let me know how you do. You'll probably get like two or three reps. Probably get pinned at the bottom and look like an idiot crawling out. Now, next week, go back in, put the same weight on. Maybe, you know, if you got a little stronger, if you accrued some adaptations, Maybe you get 10 reps this time or something like that. Take a full 3 minutes rest, maybe even take 4 or 5. See how many reps you get on the next set. I guarantee you get like seven or eight or something like that. Now, will you be able to repeat your performance? Probably not, because There is still some fatigue present, but the key is allow enough time rest between sets for fatigue to dissipate to the greatest extent that it possibly can. Between those sets, you should not be going into your resistance training sets huffing and puffing with your heart rate real elevated. Whatever. If you're training productively, training as you should be, you should get off each exercise, and you should not even want to look at the equipment for another two, three minutes, let alone get on it. So if you're on there and you get done a set and you're like, oh, Yeah, I did 10 reps. And then you're like, oh, yeah, 30 seconds, I'm ready to go again. And you do another 10 reps, I promise you, your first 10 reps were nowhere near in course failure because you would not be able to repeat that performance with only 30 seconds rest if it was actually in close proximity failure. You're probably not gonna be able to repeat the performance with three or four or five minutes rest. So, yeah, rest time's absolutely crucial, too. Good job helping us bang that home. That's key.
- [29:46]
Brad
Yeah, I definitely know that from personal experience. I mean, to imagine, Dean, I'm at the point where I'm taking probably closer to four to five minutes, probably five minutes between most sets at this point, because, I mean, I'm lifting pretty reasonable weights, and I'm taking them close to zero reps in reserve every single set. I couldn't even fathom picking up that weight again or moving that weight again in a minute or two. I couldn't even fathom. And I can't imagine how few reps I would get. So, yeah, I mean, for me, it's. Yeah, four minutes is the minimum of when I even start comprehending, oh, should I go back and think about that next set? So, you know, it's interesting because I think a lot of people, again, this is like, we just don't know what we don't know. And I think a lot of us think we equate coming out of the gym sweaty with, I did something productive. And now, like you said before, let's be clear, this is way better than sitting on the couch watching Netflix and eating Cheetos. Right? Nobody's arguing that. Obviously, we're talking about very specifically the best way to build muscle. And really, I guess a byproduct here is strength also. But clearly muscle. I thought about it and I. So I work out twice a week for my upper body, and I do 13 sets each time. So I'm literally doing essentially 26 there are a couple of sets that I do where I do separate arms, individual arms. So I'm probably doing 26 to 30 minutes of upper body exercise a week. And I mean, Dean, I'm continuing to get stronger. And I mean, I think just based on the number of compliments that I get, like, I think my physique has improved to a point where that I couldn't have even imagined when we started January of 2023. And like, when I tell people I'm doing this on 26 minutes a week for my upper body, it's truly mind boggling to people. But, like, that's what I want to. Like, if I had, like, hey, what would make it go viral is like, get top 1% results on 26 minutes a week, right?
- [31:51]
Dean Turner
Yeah, 100%. I think to your point about people wanting to feel tired and sore and sweaty and stuff like that. And then to your point about your improvements, like your anecdotal, you know, n of 1 improvements, I would say an okay to good coach can make someone tired and a great coach can make someone better. Right? So that's the key. But here's the problem with that, right? So you have a long time horizon right now. I would assume that a lot of your viewers here, your listeners, right. Probably have a longer. They're probably less like the microwave mentality than the average person. Right. If they're interested in financial independence, they probably lean that way. So the problem with using tiredness or fatigue or sweatiness or whatever as a proxy for effectiveness is it's not always a great proxy. It's like the classic correlation doesn't equal causation. But the only other really good proxy we have to determine whether or not your workouts are actually, you know, effective is progressive overload and your logbook, which is, I know one thing we wanted to touch on. So that's a longer term, you know, reactive feedback loop, so to speak. Right. How do we know Brad's workout was effective? Well, gee, we'll probably find out in like two or three or four weeks or a month or something like that when we see more workouts go by, subsequent workouts go by, and we can kind of plot Brad's progress, how much he was lifting on the seated chest press machine, how much he was lifting on a dumbbell curl, how much he was lifting on a cable lateral raise, how much he was lifting on a hack squat and so forth. So I think a lot of people don't want to hear the kind of answer of, oh, yeah, tiredness, fatigue, you know, Sweatiness isn't really an effective proxy for determining whether you got what you wanted out of your workout or not, because the alternative is one with a longer time horizon and one that's, you know, just takes time to transpire. You know what I mean? That's annoying because people want it right away. But as far as the logbook goes, and let's bang this home, it is key to have some kind of objective metric, some objective measuring system to help you determine whether or not what you're doing is, you know, moving you in the direction that you want to be moving. It's literally the simplest thing in the world to just have Google sheets, you know, with your workouts written, or have an app like heavy or whatever, or just have a pen and paper and write down what you did. Hey, I did a flat barbell bench press. I did this set with a hundred pounds for ten reps. I did this set with a hundred pounds for nine reps, and I did this set for 100 pounds for eight reps. And then I moved on to the next one. And you log, maybe your RIR as well, had no reps in reserve, no reps in reserve, no reps in reserve. And then you can kind of plot your progress on the long term and make sure that you are actually moving the needle in the right direction. Because as we kind of said at the outset, that is absolutely the key. It is not enough to just go. You're not just going to look better because you went in the gym and lifted weights. Tons of people go in the gym and lift weights and never look any better. I'm sure people who are listening to this who may have been going to the gym long enough, I mean, especially if it's the same gym, you may see a guy who's in there, you know, he looks like he's working pretty hard, right? And week one goes by, week two goes by. All of a sudden, six months go by, 12 months go by, 18 months go by, the dude don't look any different, right? And it's like if you took a look at that guy's logbook, assuming he has one, which he probably doesn't, which is why he's not making progress, you'd probably be like, man, this guy hasn't added a single pound to any of his lifts, so why would he look any different, right? You will look different as a result of you accruing adaptations. That's kind of the key here. You have to be doing enough. You have to be working hard enough executing with proper techniques. So you can drive home adaptations which will actually overhaul, change your body composition position. Kind of a long winded tangent there, but maybe you want to put a bow on that.
- [35:21]
Brad
Yeah, I mean the bow is. This is similar thinking to fi. This is exactly what you're talking about. This is the mindset that should appeal to all of us. We are long term thinkers. We know it's about those little 1% actions accrued over time that compound into something remarkable. And sometimes you have to think a little bit differently. Right? Like this is literally the exact mindset that we use to succeed at FI is this. And Dean, that logbook. It's such a fundamental thing. It seems like it would be like, oh, it's kind of a side note, but I literally, I went to like Walmart and bought the like 75 cent, like notebooks that my kids have, you know, in school. And I literally make a page for each day that I go in the gym. I write out my six exercises. I write down, you know, what you tell me, are my reps in reserve? I write down the exact weight that I did last time and the number of reps. So again, I'm just trying to beat that every single time. And sometimes you can, sometimes you can. Most of the time I have certainly. But I want to at least do what I did last time. But also, I don't want to reinvent the wheel. So for me, it's something as simple as, hey, when I walk up to that seated row machine and there are two adjustments. There's the adjustment for the seat, there's the adjustment for the arms, I want to know that my seat is on click number four and the arms are on click number three. And I don't have to think about it every time. The fewer decisions I have to make, the easier it is to get through this without friction. Right? So I know immediately. I walk up to the seated row machine, seats on four, arms are on three. I put, you know, the most weight that there is on the machine and I do my set, I look at the number of reps I did last time and I try to beat it by one like that, you know, in a perfect world. And it just takes the decision making out of it. And that's what's so wonderful.
- [37:15]
Dean Turner
Yeah, there's only really two types of people that belittle like compiling data with a logbook. And those two types are one, the genetic freaks. Like the top tier genetic people who can do basically anything to a point. Right. And they'll progress. Right. And even for those people to do it, it's still stupid because they could actually probably have better results, right, had they actually logged it. And then the other people who belittle logging are usually people who have made zero progress for an extended period of time. And this goes for calorie tracking too, right? People scoff at it. They're like, I don't want to track my calories, I don't, I don't want to log my workouts. And it's like, well, how much progress have you made in the last three years, five years, 10 years? And it's like, none. I've actually gotten worse. And it's like, okay, so you're not willing to make this little concession, this like, concession that takes you a couple minutes, a frickin week or a day or whatever to potentially drastically improve your health. I know that I would be nowhere near what I am right now physically, right, in terms of like my body composition, if I didn't log my workouts. I've been logging my workouts for as long as I can. I don't even think I ever didn't log my workouts even when I was 14, because I always thought it was kind of crazy. I always wanted to have something to go off of. I think I maybe tried it for a month or something and I was like, oh, I'll remember what weight I did last week. And then you don't, you don't remember what weight you did last week because you have 35 other things to think about. So just having that data and that data keeps you accountable too. Like it tells you, hey, you might think, oh, I'm doing well. Because you know, you just say four or six weeks go by, right? And you started a baseline weight, right? You can do for 10 reps. And one week you bumped to 11 reps. Like you got an extra rep or something like that, or maybe even went to 12 reps, right? And then the next week you had like a drop off because you were sick and you were back to 10. Then the next week you were like still the same. And then the next week you're at like 11. And then the next week you're at like 12, right? And then the next week had a drop off because you had a bad night's sleep and you're still at 10 after like six, seven weeks or something like that. And it's kind of like you need to look at your logbook and hold yourself accountable and say, hey, I'm actually really not progressing. And you know that as a result, right, of actually having a logbook Whereas you might think because you saw a couple rep bumps in there over time, you're like, oh yeah, I'm progressing. But it's like, no, you're actually not. So your logbook keeps you. That wasn't the best example in the world. But your logbook keeps you honest is the big key. Just like the calorie tracking keeps you honest and measurements and weigh ins and stuff like that keep you honest. It's absolutely crucial, especially if you're working by yourself. Right. Because you don't have anybody else to keep you honest and you don't want to lie to yourself about what type of progress you're making and whether or not you're moving the needle in the right direction or not. Because the only person you hurt when you lie to yourself is yourself. And you know, when I have clients, Brad can attest to this. I'm kind of like a data hound. I like to have clients data. That way I know, hey, are things moving in the right direction? Are we actually progressing like we believe we are? Because people can go many months and even years and fool themselves into thinking that they're actually making progress when in reality they're not. And then they kind of look up or see a picture of themselves on the beach or whatever and they're like, man, my physique looks the exact same. Actually, even worse. I mean, if you have a logbook, you could stave a lot of that off because you hold yourself accountable and then hopefully make the necessary changes if things are not, you know, moving or progressing the way that you want them to.
- [40:22]
Brad
Yeah, agreed. I think like we said, the logbook and understanding what a productive set looks like if people walk into the gym with that. Right. Those two pieces and then understanding you can't just do your next set after 30 seconds, which they're realistically not going to be able to. You're going to be so far ahead of the game, just do those three things. Take two to three minutes or more between sets, have the logbook and think about what a productive set looks like. And when you get to the top end of that range, whether it's 10 to 12, increase the wait next time.
- [40:55]
Unknown
Thanks for listening to Choose a five.
- [40:57]
Brad
And for all your support of our mission here. The absolute best way to support Choose a buy is when you sign up for your next rewards credit card to use our cards page at choose if I.com cards I keep this page constantly updated so it should always be the top resource for you. Thanks for being part of our community and for your Support. So obviously, Dean, we can't get into what exact exercises and the program, like that's beyond the scope. But I mean, we can talk just quickly about because I know people are going to have questions of like, okay, what is an upper body day even remotely look like? And I could just quickly, quickly go through like what mine look like I think would be somewhat illustrative. Even though again, everybody's gym is going to be different, et cetera. But another, and I will do that in a minute. But another thing that you talked about was a lot of people think they need to constantly change their exercises. I mean realistically, like you've had me do the same exercises except for when I get a little tweak on something and I need to change it because I had a little slight injury. But that's just my own thing. I might do the same six exercises for upper day one and upper day two for five years.
- [42:11]
Dean Turner
Right.
- [42:11]
Brad
Like there's essentially no reason for me to change as long as I'm continuing to improve. And I think that's critical. Everybody needs to hear that. So yeah, just real quick, my upper day one looks like a flat machine press. That's essentially think like the machine that would be the bench press. So I'm actually sitting up and I'm doing a machine press. Then I'm doing assisted pull ups. So obviously I can do pull ups without an assisted. But we are trying to build targeted muscle. And when you see people do pull ups, they're mostly doing some wacky stuff where they're swinging and doing all this stuff. An assisted pull up machine, when done properly is brutally effective. So that's exercise two. Then I do a seated machine overhead press. And then I do. I talked about that chest supported row. And then I'll do a tricep exercise. It might be that seated dip machine. And then I'll do a bicep exercise, let's say dumbbell curls. So it really, it honestly is as simple as that. My day two for upper is almost identical except a little difference. Instead of doing the seated flat machine press, I'm doing a seated incline press. And then I'm doing a cable lat raise instead of the overhead press. But realistically, it's just. All right, look, I'm doing assisted pull ups both time I'm doing chest supported row. Yeah, I'm changing my hand position, et cetera. But realistically for most people, if you're looking to get 80, 20, it's hey, do some type of chest press, do some type of overhead press, do Some type of row and then do a tricep and a bicep and maybe, like I said, throw in, I don't know. Assisted pull ups is really wonderful. I mean, Dean, that's a pretty damn good upper body exercise that most people could go into any Globo gym, any crunch, fitness, et cetera, anywhere in the world and do pretty readily.
- [44:06]
Dean Turner
Yep, 100%. Yeah. You kind of actually answered the question that I guess you were posing to me because that I literally have the. Just so I don't forget, I could rattle them off the top of my head, but I always like, forget one. I literally just have what I categorize as like the major muscle groups up on my phone.
- [44:21]
Brad
Nice.
- [44:21]
Dean Turner
Which is chest, your mid slash, upper back, your lats, which is another part of your back, your delts, which is your shoulders, your biceps and your triceps. That covers the upper body, more or less. You could include your traps as well. And then the lower body, pretty much your quads, right front of your thighs, your hams, back of your thighs, your glutes, which is your butt, your calves. And then you have just your abs as well, which you could throw in there. I guess that could be with the upper because technically it's your torso. So. Yeah. With regards to the chest, like if you do some kind of seated chest press machine, one flat, one incline. If you do, and this doesn't have to all be on the same day, just like across a week or training cycle or whatever. As far as mid to upper back goes, chest supported rows with either like a pronated, so an overhand grip or like a neutral grip that'll dust that lat, some kind of pull down. So a pull up is basically a version of a pull down. You could do a lat pull down your delts. Usually if you do a lateral raise out to the side and you do an overhead press, they're pretty much covered. You could talk about the rear delts too, but they'll get hit on some rowing and whatnot. Your biceps, some kind of curl variation. Your triceps, some kind of movement where you're extending your elbow. And then your quads. It'll ideally be some kind of extension, like a leg extension and then some kind of squat pattern. Your hams, it'll ideally be some kind of hip hinge where you're kind of bending at the waist, driving your butt back with straight knees. And then some kind of a leg curl, ideally a seated version because of the anatomical position it puts you in. But a lying would do as well. And then your glutes usually some form of like a hip extension. So where you're basically like bridging your glutes, you're driving your glutes into hip extension. And then your calves, usually some kind of raise where you're kind of biasing your time toward the bottom stretch position for a very unique reason that isn't worth going into. And then your abs, it's usually just spinal flexion. So basically just like you can think of like driving your chin. So if you think of like an upright posture, a person standing tall, driving your chin under load toward your belly button, that spinal flexion and the opposite of that would be like, if you're in like a Daffy duck pose, which would be spinal extension. So you're just going through spinal flexion, spinal extension under load effectively there. But yeah, if you do those types of movements and you, you know, do ballpark for each of those major muscle groups, 6ish sets per week. You know, you split that across maybe two sessions. So like two to three sets PER, you're in the ballpark, 5ish to 10ish, 12ish rep range. You take your sets close in proximity to failure. You execute with proper form, you focus on your diet, you know, which is a whole different topic, right? Getting sleep, minimizing life stress. Like you're most of the way home. And those little itty bitty details probably don't matter a whole bunch. They probably matter very little if you do all that stuff. As a matter of fact, yeah.
- [46:55]
Brad
I mean, that is, that is huge. That's a great way to summarize. I know you kind of jokingly talked about diet there, but can we talk quickly about protein? Because I think that is the essential building block of building muscle. So you could do all this, you could do literally verbatim what Dean just told you over the last 45 minutes. And if you're eating zero grams of protein a day, it's not going to be ideal. So yeah, talk us through protein, Dean, and really like just some quick hits on like best sources, basically.
- [47:27]
Dean Turner
Yeah, Meat. Meat's probably your best source, more or less. You're looking at like chicken, beef, ground turkey, things of that nature. Fish is a good one as well. Eggs, egg whites. Really solid. In terms of sources, if you struggle to hit your protein intake dietarily, pretty much a protein powder protein bar is going to be a good play. You know, with vegans, you're looking at things like tofu, chickpeas, things of that nature to get your protein in there's. Also supplementation available for vegans as well. Ghost is an example of a brand. No, no one's paying me to say this, I just use their products. Ghost is an example of a company that makes a vegan protein that does a pretty good job especially on taste and then like the macronutrient profile. So the carbs relative to the fats, relative to the protein, relative to the calories. But yeah, those are the best sources in terms of how much you should consume. Ideally you're close to somewhere around 1 gram per pound of body weight provided you are a relatively lean individual. So if you're somebody who's severely overweight, you can err closer to like 1 gram per pound of lean body mass. So that's factoring out the amount of fat mass you have. Honestly, even if you're a relatively lean individual, you could still take that number and you're probably consuming ample protein if you're an individual that really struggles with your intake. So if you. Women, this is very common in women. I know that I'm generalizing here, but like if you're 140 pound woman, right, listening to this and you're like, oh my God, 140 grams of protein, like I count my calories and I get like 50. Okay, that's not terrible, it's certainly not very good. But your goal should be to just slowly work that up over time. So you're, I mean you could try and overhaul your life overnight and just change to all these protein based sources. Or you could say, all right, I'm at 50 grams a day on average now for on a given week. Next week I'm going to try and get 55. The following week I'm going to try and get 60. The following week I'm going To try and get 65 on average right following week, 70 and so forth and work it up until you're in a higher range that's still sustainable. So that's usually something that I recommend with like people who buy custom training plans with me, I almost always have a note in there about that and I'm like, hey, it's all right if you're not good at getting your protein intake in now in terms of like the ideal amount. But just try and work that up slowly over time. And honestly that's usually something that's more sustainable and usually produces a higher adherence hit rate on the long term because you didn't try and overhaul the clients, you know, life like overnight, which can work well for a period of time, but then it can backfire very badly when they imminently go back to their old habits, they revert to their old habits and then they rebound. So be very like cognizant of a potential rebound. That's not to like let you off the hook and say if you have poor dietary habits, you should just keep them and be like, oh, this is who I am. That way I don't rebound. But you should just try and slowly get better over time. It's the choose five mindset, right? It's like get 1% better every day, get 1% better every week. If you're terrible with your protein intake, it doesn't matter a whole bunch right now. All you can do is be better with it going forward and you could look up in a year or 18 months and be consuming double what you're consuming. Be in the ideal range because you just slowly worked it up over time. So yeah, those are the ideal sources, more or less. That's kind of the ideal intake. I know people are going to ask about timing. The timing is like a very, very nuanced thing and a detail that probably doesn't really matter a whole bunch. I would say generally speaking, spread your protein. So if you have 150 grams to a lot and you're going to have five feedings throughout the day, right? And I'm distinguishing feedings for meals because like that would be like two snacks and two meals, right? I would probably try and say if you have five feedings and I'm not saying that's the appropriate amount because it could be three or it could be four, it could be two, really whatever allows for caloric adherence because that's the number one thing. But just say you have 5 and 150 grams to spend in terms of protein, spread that fairly evenly. Have one feeding with 30 grams, one with 40, one with 20, one with, you know, 31 with 30 and then bang, that's your 150. Doesn't have to be in perfectly 30, every one of them just in a tight ish window. And ideally you consume some. If there was ever a time to consume ample protein, it would be in the post workout window within an hour or two after it doesn't make all the difference in the world. But if there was ever an ideal time after you do a resistance training session, you definitely want to have a protein heavy feeding then. So yeah, that, that's how it works from a timing standpoint as well. But really your main focus should be on getting the required amount, getting the ideal amount or close each day on average. Each week, month, year, yada, yada, yada. Steering toward the sources that I mentioned because they're what's going to help you do it.
- [51:47]
Brad
Yeah, and I love that mindset. We're trying to be directionally accurate. We're not trying to be like fiendishly perfect every single meal. Everything doesn't have to be optimized. Like you're saying. Yeah. Is it ideal to do X, Y and Z? Sure. But we're human beings, we need to give ourselves some grace. Right. So I think one way that I've found that helps me get to my goal of 180 to 200 grams of protein a day is Greek yogurt is a massive one for any five people out there. So the Oikos triple zero is the one that I get. I get it at Costco in these 18 packs and I was shocked at how cheap they were. At least at my Costco it was like 13 bucks for 18 of these things and they are 15 grams of protein for only like 90 calories. It's like one of the best bangs to the buck you can get in terms of protein to calorie ratio. Like I said, they're about 70 cents each. A little less. And realistically, I mean, Dean, I'm probably having five of these a day. I mean, right there, that's 75 grams of protein and that's probably way more than I was getting before we met in January of 2023 in an entire day from my entire intake. And this is just, hey, these are tasty little things that I have really with every meal now.
- [53:06]
Dean Turner
It's never been easier to consume a high protein figure. Literally never. There's just so many options available to you. I mean, likewise, it's never been easier to consume a ton of hyper palatable foods. Right. We have access to so much now. So your choices, your habits will obviously dictate that. But yeah, the Oikos Triple zeros are phenomenal. The Dan enlightened fits are really good. That's another one. They taste phenomenal. People love those. Me personally as well. The Chobani zero sugar ones are pretty good as well. There's a couple more out there. But yeah, really good choices. Really easy. You could just tack it onto the end of a meal. You could make it a meal itself if you have two or three or something like that and they taste good. Like this is not something that we're choking down. Like, oh yeah, you got to be fit. Like I genuinely like when I have a couple of yogurts on the slate and like you've seen how many I eat. I want to say the numbers here, it's high. I guess I'll just say my record in a day, I think I had 15. And that wasn't, that wasn't particularly difficult. That was just like. Because it just helped me hit my calories and protein for that day. Like if you asked me to eat 25, 30, 35 plus in a day and you were like, hey, here's 50 grand, can you do it? I'd be like, yep.
- [54:09]
Brad
Oh, easy.
- [54:09]
Dean Turner
If you give me $1,000 for every yogurt I eat, there's no way I'm not getting six figures, let's put it that way. Space it out accordingly throughout the day. 24 hour window, but yeah, just phenomenal tool. Great way to add protein. Tons of different flavors, tons of different options. There's no excuse because like I said, it's never been easier to consume high protein. It just takes some freaking effort and some planning. That's the key.
- [54:33]
Brad
Yep, planning and effort. I mean that should be music to our five ears, right? Like this is what we do, right? Like we think long term, we think about the inputs. 1% we plan, we scheme for how is this going to work out, right? And we record our numbers. What do I say is the first thing you do for fi? You write down your net worth, you write down your income statement. It's the same with the logbook for the fitness guys. This is the exact same thing. It really is. It is such a transference of all the things we've learned from five. So that's why, I mean, Dean, honestly, that's part of why I love this so much. It's just, it's so natural. It's a long term thinking. And I mean, not that I've been at this for long term, I mean it's under two years. But I've seen it really start to come to fruition and it's just, it's awesome. So we have a couple of questions and I'm going to really try to lock them into a couple categories. It seems like most of the questions came in around a couple of different categories. But before we get to those to close out the episode, I just wanted to ask about. So we talked about rest intra workout, right? So we talked about, hey, minimum two minutes between sets. Realistically, it's going to be three plus minutes. The same holds true for, hey, I just finished my triceps, I'm going to go to biceps. You don't just run over there and do that because part of this is central nervous system. So you want to take the same amount of rest between exercises as well. But then what about the number of days rest between upper body workouts and lower body workouts, for instance?
- [56:06]
Dean Turner
Yeah, so if you're talking just like upper to upper and lower to lower, you definitely do not want to work them back to back, let's say that for certain. Right? So you would never do upper, but like, let's just isolate a muscle group here too, to make this even more specific. You would never do chest on Monday and then do chest on Tuesday, almost regardless of the dose. Now, could you do chest on a Monday and get away with, or maybe it even be productive doing chest again on a Wednesday? It depends on the dose. So if you did a set or two or three or something like that, probably, and that may even be conducive to success. That goes back to what I said early on when I was talking about splits, when I said you could do A, full body A, full body B, full body C, on non consecutive days. Funny enough, I literally just released one of those for free with a PDF today. So, yeah, probably like almost never the next day, potentially about 48 hours later, depending on the dose. If the dose is higher in the first session, then the subsequent session is going to need to be further out, you know, if you're working the same local musculature. So if you do some kind of chest work, say you do, let's call it six sets of chest, you're probably not touching chest if you do that on a Monday until at least Thursday, right? So you're looking at like 72 hours. And then, you know, assuming you do another 6ish, you probably wouldn't touch it again until like Sunday or Monday. So another 72ish, 96ish hours, assuming the dose is there. Now, if you do something like, and this is like a bro split, where you work each muscle group independently, like you do chest Monday by itself, just chest, right? There will be some overlap between movements, but mostly just chest. On Tuesday you do back, on Wednesday you do, I don't know, shoulders. Thursday you do legs, and Friday you do arms or something like that. You might be dosing so much. If we just take like the chest on Monday, that not a prayer that you're hitting it again until at least Friday, Saturday, Sunday or just the next week. And obviously the issue with hitting it Friday is, well, you have legs that day, so you kind of can't. So logistically that's constraint. But yeah, between working the Same local musculature, depends on the dose. But the absolute hard rule is there's pretty much no way you'd ever do it the next day. You could do it 48 hours later if it was low enough in dose. If it's more moderate in dose, you're looking at like a three day on average, kind of. And that's what we do. We pretty much, hey, we're going to hit upper on Monday and then, you know, we'll pretty much touch everything. We'll touch the chest, touch the back, touch the shoulders, touch the biceps, triceps, and none of those will get hit again until like Thursday or Friday. So we have ample time to recover between sessions. Because you do, you garner a stimulus when you go in the gym, which is what helps drive muscle growth. But you also accrue fatigue, which you need to give time to dissipate before you hit your next session. That way you not only return to baseline, but you accrue some adaptations and then you can express those adaptations in the subsequent session and continue to build and build and build slowly over time. So, yeah, general rule of thumb on frequency is definitely not the next day, potentially the day after, but maybe closer to three days, depending on how it's programmed.
- [58:56]
Brad
Awesome. Let's get into some of the listener questions. So we got a couple that were kind of from the running community. And like I said on episode 480, we have a ton of runners in the community, which is wonderful. But I think runners have started to realize, hey, muscle and strength building is actually really important for us. And it's been cool to see that whole community come around to it. But there are lots of questions. So I think there's some overlap and I'm going to try to summarize in my own words of like, I worry that strength work will erode my running performance if I do too much of it. So right, there's a give and take between the exercises. They understand that there's obviously benefit, but how do I balance these things? And I think there were questions that came in not just from runners, but like, people who do other exercises, like, how do you balance this? And I guess that might get to like, what are your goals? That might be a larger answer, Dean, but I'm curious, like, what would you say to someone who says, like, hey, look, I really love running four times a week. How can I build strength and hypertrophy training into that to help assist my running? Is that even doable?
- [60:09]
Dean Turner
It's doable. I would just. My general advice would probably be to integrate conservatively. So I would probably say, hey, started a relatively low dose. We're talking 2ish, 3ish resistance training sessions a week, 20, 30 minutes. Give it time. The only way to really know this stuff, this is what sucks about this, is a lot of it is trial and error. You have to just trial and error it. So start conservatively. Make sure there's a margin of safety there. That way you don't just inundate yourself with like, so much work. Because you do have a finite ability to recover from all activities, right? All strenuous activity, which running is somewhat strenuous. Resistance training is somewhat strenuous. I like to think about recovery as like a bucket. And with every strenuous task you do, you fill the bucket more and more and more, more. And you don't want to get to the point where the water's overflowing or the liquid's overflowing, because each of them could be different types of liquid or whatever. But anyway, integrate conservatively and just pay attention to your performance on both fronts. You know, have a logbook, see how your runs are going. Is it helping improve your running? Okay, then continue doing what you're doing. Maybe don't change anything. Is it taking a hit on your running? Well, maybe you need to dial your running back a little bit so you can have room in terms of that finite ability to recognize, recover for your resistance training, right? For the fatigue that's going to come as a result of that. So it's kind of a trial and error type deal. It depends on the goal, it depends on the individual. So it's hard to give, like, a concrete, specific answer. But integrate conservatively. Pay attention to your performance. That is the ultimate proxy. Remember tiredness, fatigue, how you're feeling, yada, yada, yada. The ultimate proxy for whether or not something is working or not is your performance. That should be simple, that should be intuitive, but it's not. Because I think people are annoyed by the fact that it takes a long time to figure that out, right? And you have to kind of rigorously assess your data. You have to say, hey, how have my runs been going during this time frame? And the other thing is, there are confounders there, right? Suppose that you're a runner and you're running four times a week, and you start to implement resistance training conservatively. You do two or three sessions, 20 or 30 minutes a week, and all of a sudden, you know, you lose your job and you stop sleeping as a result. And it's like oh, you're running took a hit. It's like, well, did your running take a hit because you added resistance training right into large capacity, or did it take a hit because you have so much stress and you're not recovering at all because of this confounder? So there's so many variables at play, but integrate, conservatively, track your performance. Those are the keys.
- [62:28]
Brad
So this actually ties into Eric's question from earlier, which was saying, hey, what if I only have this short bit of time? So I'm curious, Dean, if, let's say we're talking about that upper body workout that I do where I do two sets of each of those six exercises, right? And those six exercises cover essentially my entire upper body. Would someone with half the time, would they want to do one set of each of those if you only had 30 minutes, is that the ideal?
- [62:55]
Dean Turner
Yes. You get a lot out of your first set. If you warm up properly, your first set is the most productive set. You can kind of think of this like bouncing a tennis ball, right? And the higher the tennis ball goes, the greater the effect size. So if you bounce the tennis ball as hard as you can off the ground, it'll shoot up maybe, I don't know, 20ft or something like that, right? And then it'll come down, it'll hit the ground, it'll bounce again. And what will the second bounce be? 10ft, 12ft, 8ft? Right. A fraction of what the first bounce was. Your first set is literally akin to that first bounce on the tennis ball in terms of the higher the feet, the higher the effect size. And then your third set, it'll be an even lower bounce, your four set and so forth. So it's the law of diminishing returns. Your first set of resistance train exercise. Your first working set we're talking about here, because warm up sets, which, by the way, just to kind of gloss over this and make this simple, we talked a lot about proximity to failure, right? Your warmup sets should not be in close proximity to failure. They should just get you prepared to do your working sets in close proximity to failure. So a typical warm up protocol would be like 50% of your working weight for like 10 reps. So what your first set of your working weight is going to be take a minute or two because you might not need the full rest between warmup sets. Then 75ish percent of your working weight for like 6 to 8 reps. That 6 or 8th rep or 7th reps or 8th rep should be pretty easy. Then take 2 or 3 minutes then do your working set. So your first working set is what's going to get you the most stimulus of any of your sets. And that's because after that you've accrued some fatigue, which will diminish the effectiveness of subsequent sets. That's not to say that they're ineffective altogether. It's just to say that the effect size is lower than the initial set. So if somebody can only hit one set of each exercise, that's going to be the best bang for their buck set. It's not like, you know, a car gets going and it's like, the hotter it gets, like, to a point, the better it gets. Like your, your Toyota is faster after you let it actually warm up in the snow, you know what I mean? Rather than when you just turned it on and gave it a rip down the street. It's not one of those things. It's literally that first rev, that first set is the most productive set. So, yeah, if a person had half the time as you and they had the same programming and you just gave them one set, they could probably still get a decent bit out of that set. But that goes back to the sufficient mechanical tension. They still need enough. Can they maintain on that low if they do it twice a week, probably. But can they gain on it? That's where you're like, are they reaching that threshold of mechanical tension where they're actually producing enough to grow? It depends. It depends on a lot of specifics, on the individual and whatnot.
- [65:22]
Brad
Right. But yeah, you could see a world where again, if we're talking literally six sets and each set takes a minute and you're resting four minutes between. Yeah, that's 30 minutes for a workout. So, yeah, I mean, that's for someone who's coming in off the street and says, hey, I only have 30 minutes hard stop. Yeah, probably. Someone who's completely untrained is probably going to see some benefit from that. And then hopefully you can establish some more time to do that as you start seeing positive feedback loop and you're getting stronger, you're looking better in the mirror. You might all of a sudden magically find an hour instead of 30 minutes. So it would be interesting to see that as a way to get started because again, it's cutting on friction. Right. Like any way you can cut down on friction. So, yeah, for Eric and the runners out there, people who don't have a lot of time, this could be a good way to investigate if this works.
- [66:13]
Dean Turner
For you on that front. Just like a quick point as a beginner Right. As a novice, someone who hasn't been doing any resistance training or any exercise in general, establishing kind of enjoyment and adherence around your resistance training protocol or your exercise regimen or whatever it is is the most important thing. So, like, we're talking a lot about what's optimal for a certain goal, a certain objective, but the most important thing that you can do is do the thing that keeps you coming back. As long as you continuously go through those gym doors, you are starting to win. And that's a major, major key. So that would be more for the beginners than novices here. Find what you like. Find what you like. And then, you know, you can tinker with it and get more specific with your goals over time.
- [66:54]
Brad
Man, you set me up for the next category of questions perfectly, which is, you said, keep coming in those gym doors. We had a couple questions come in about, hey, what if I can't afford a gym or there's no gym near me, or like, what can I do at home? Are there ways to do your methodology at home without machines, without weights, or is that just unrealistic? It does that. Get back to, hey, what's your goal?
- [67:21]
Dean Turner
Yeah, it's. What's your goal? What's your commitment level? I'd say in terms of my methodology, it depends on how little equipment we're talking about. If you just have your body weight. Yeah, come on, like, you don't have a prayer of pulling any of this off. And that's not to discourage people from doing body weight stuff. It's more to say in terms of my methodology and optimizing for like, body composition enhancement, increases in muscular size and so forth, like more or less, forget about it. You could probably use that as a gateway to getting you into the gym or something like that, or establishing enjoyment, establishing adherence. But in terms of just having body weight, just having a set of dumbbells, like, it's not a lot. Can you improve your general fitness with that? Yeah, you absolutely can, but you're probably not going to be moving greatly in the direction of a specific goal if you're hell bent on working out at home. Body weight stuff's fine. I try and get a set of adjustable dumbbells. After that, the next piece is like a power rack with a barbell and plates because you can get a lot done there. Maybe a cable stanchion because you can get a lot done with that. Maybe a Smith machine because you can get a lot done with that. And then after that you're talking about getting super niche pieces of Equipment that at that point you're very dedicated. And if you're worried about the finances of it, I would just go to a gym at that point. Because one single leg extension machine could run you four, five, six grand. So it's like that could be a GYM membership for 10 years, you know what I mean? But yeah, if you're hell bent on having low level equipment, maybe you don't have a lot of space or whatever. Literally your body weight in a set of adjustable dumbbells can be pretty good for a little while and you can improve your body composition, especially if you're somebody untrained, novice, not really in this kind of space.
- [68:55]
Brad
All right, next category came from people asking how your philosophy would be different for women.
- [69:05]
Dean Turner
Yeah, so no real difference other than how we prioritize exercises and bias certain musculature. So with men, you generally program fairly evenly in terms of like the workload for each muscle group. Like the biceps are going to get about this much, call it six sets a week. The triceps are going to be good about that, give or take, chest about that, you know, hamstrings about that, quads about that ballpark, all in the same range, I guess you could say for women, usually you bias fairly heavily toward the glutes, the shoulders and the kind of upper to mid back and musculature. And the reason is it kind of accentuates or enhances the ideal female shape, I guess you could call it. Now this is an assumption, it's a generalization. Not all females necessarily want to have a quote unquote hourglass shape, I guess you could call it, though I imagine that the majority do so usually when programming for women. So like I sell women's plans on my sites, I sell it three times per week at four times per week and five times per week. So whichever fits your schedule. And the similarity that they share is that they're all biased toward mostly the glutes and then somewhat the upper back and the shoulders. And this is something me and Brad talked about off air. Women have this a little bit of a misconception sometimes that by lifting weights they're going to get like all bulky and build all this muscle like you're not. It's very, very difficult to build a lot of muscle. Trust me, I've been trying at it for 14 years and I've only successfully built a moderate amount.
- [70:32]
Brad
Moderate?
- [70:33]
Dean Turner
Yeah, moderate amount compared to some people at least. So the thing is, with women, it will just enhance your body composition. Your shoulders would be a little bit More defined, you know, they'll be a little bit bigger relative to your waist, which is a good thing. Same with your upper back and stuff like that. So the bias is really what changes. But if you look at the exercise selection, it's funny. Actually, one of your listeners, very nice woman by the name of Jennifer, sent me an email regarding my programming and her and her boyfriend had bought plans and she mentioned that there was a lot of overlap between the exercises. And so that kind of answers the question. Yes, there is a lot of overlap in resistance training between male and female when training for, you know, muscular hypertrophy, for enhancement in body composition. The only real difference is how you sequence and bias the exercises and how that affects outcomes and the musculature.
- [71:18]
Brad
Yeah. And just my kind of editorial is this is for both women and men. You are not just going to fall backwards into having more muscle than you know what to do with. So I think we all want more muscle whether we know it or not. I think a lot of us think like, oh, we want to lose weight, but realistically we want to lose fat and gain muscle. And I think that is critical. But you have to work at it. Let's be clear. Like you're not just going to wake up after two training sessions in the gym and have more muscle than you know what to do with. So do not worry about that for one second, no matter who you are. I think that is absolutely critical.
- [71:56]
Dean Turner
A hundred percent spot on.
- [71:58]
Brad
Dean, the last. So I've done a good job of paraphrasing here on the categories of questions. The last one actually came in from a couple people. I'm going to read John's because it was basically about machines. So people were curious, why are we using machines? He said the machines part definitely piqued my interest. I primarily use strong lifts app, which is a lot around barbell training. I was thinking about trying to get it back into it, but how do you think about the secondary effects of compound barbell movements on things like stabilization and strengthening ligaments, et cetera, when you switch to machines? I can see the concept of directly targeting muscles, but I'm curious if there are trade offs.
- [72:38]
Dean Turner
So yeah, there are trade offs, I would say on the connective tissue front, which is one thing that he touched on there, connective tissue, generally, based on my understanding, and this is a little bit outside my scope, but generally speaking, that has more to do with the load you're bearing in terms of how high a percent of the one rep max you're bearing than it does with A specific movement. So you could, you could connective tissue strengthen or like tendon strength on a machine just as well as you could on a, on a, your body has no idea that you're on a barbell relative to a machine, right. It just knows resistance or stress or force that's being applied. So on the tenon front that has more to do with the percent of one rep max that you're lifting at more than anything else. And then as far as like the secondary trade offs and stabilization and stuff like that go. So I would say it depends on what your goals kind of are. So if you're an individual that wants to, you know, enhance their muscle size, right. They want to improve their body composition, the machines are obviously going to be more targeted because they have a lower stability demand, they have a lower coordination demand, right, because you're in a fixed movement pattern and a lower reliance on ancillary musculature. But the whole stabilization thing, you can just work the muscles that are stabilizers, right, Independently. So for example, your quads have to contract when you're doing a stiff legged deadlift, right? They have to co contract even though they're not the prime mover, they're not the thing that's doing hip extension, hip flexion, hip extension, which is what happens on a stiff leg deadlift. So your quads are stabilizing, they are one of the stabilizer muscles on that, right. If you wanted to work your quads efficiently and effectively, just do a quad movement in conjunction with the stiff leg deadlift. I think people have this idea that there's these like little itty bitty stabilizer muscles that no one really knows about. And like if you don't, if you don't work your body in a way that's like, if you don't pick movements that are unstable that you're going to kind of just like be this big hunk of mass and fall over and not be able to do your activities of daily living. The body doesn't really work like that. That's not how things work. And if it did, then we'd all be standing on Bosu balls in a canoe in the middle of the ocean doing, you know, the most unstable work possible. So if you have some strong lifts, actually was really, really popular a very long time ago. We're talking like 2010ish, maybe even before that. And it popularized kind of like the five by five strategies. And it was big on the, the flat barbell bench press, the deadlift, the bent over row overhead press, and the squat. If you wanted to improve those movements specifically in a shorter timeframe and more nearer timeframe, then I would recommend that you probably stick toward those movements. Because a big thing of improving them in the short term is technical proficiency, you know, being refined with the movements from a technique standpoint. But if you're somebody just concerned with not even necessarily body composition enhancement, just like general health, general fitness, being able to do your activities of daily living like machines will integrate just fine with that as far as 10 inch strength and stabilization and all that stuff go. If programs, you know, in a way that's complete and kind of holistic.
- [75:43]
Brad
Awesome Dean. That was incredibly helpful. That really kind of summarizes all the questions, the main categories of questions that came in. So I mean to me this was an absolute masterclass in how can we get started building significant muscle. So I really think this is going to be extremely well received by our community specifically. I think it's ideal for people with our mindset. So I'm just fascinated to hear the feedback on this and I'm sure people are going to reach out to you in droves. I know they already have. After episode 480, how can people find you? So I know Twitter is your big social media and then you have a website where you have programming but talk us through that real quick.
- [76:25]
Dean Turner
Yeah, so Dean Turner Training.com is where all my offers are. There's also a contact button at the bottom if you wanted to just like send me an email with a question about about something, you know, regarding like some kind of purchase you want to make or whatever. I noticed that the Choose5 community seems to be the high. Almost nobody contacts me on the contact form. Most people contact me on like a Twitter DM or an Instagram DM when they're like reaching out about purchasing something, assuming they have a question beforehand. But the Choose5 community almost always uses the contact for the bottom which I put in there like I barely even knew it was still a thing until I think we did that episode. Then I get like this onslaught of inquiries through that. But yeah, just dean turner training.com you'll find all my offerings there. I offer one on one. Coaching is my main thing. I offer ready made workout programs and I also offer group hypertrophy programming as well. You'll find that under the workout programs tab. I do have a free resources section that I'm building out. There's a couple on there right now. I actually put a couple more out that I need to put on the website. A couple workout plans and Stuff that are more like sample based. But you can make good use of it. You know, you absolutely could. You could get some good results if you ran it exactly as written. But it's more a preview than anything else. And then at Dean T training on Twitter, at Dean Turner training on Instagram, you'll find me any of those places. My DMS on Twitter are a mess because I get flooded by people who are trying to extract money from me, usually copywriters or whatever. But if I get a genuine question, I, I do parse through them. I try and get those answered. But yeah, those are all the places you can find me. Long winded rant.
- [77:59]
Brad
No, that's very, very helpful. And yeah, like I said, Twitter is where I found you originally. You put out just amazing content. If anybody out there is on Twitter, Dean is a really, really interesting follow. He puts out just a ton of information. So as you're gleaning from this episode, he's a wealth of this knowledge and yeah, that's a great place to start. So Dean, my friend, thank you so much for the time. This was awesome.
- [78:22]
Dean Turner
Thank you so much for having me on, Brad. I really appreciate it.
- [78:25]
Unknown
Thank you for listening to today's show and for being part of the choose of I community. If you haven't already, the best ways to get involved are first subscribe to the podcast. So you're listening to this on a podcast player, just hit subscribe and then subscribe to my weekly newsletter. I actually sit down every Monday and write this by hand and I send it out Tuesday morning. So just head over to choose fi.com subscribe and it's really, really easy to get on the newsletter list right there. And I would greatly appreciate it. It's the best way to get in touch with me. You can actually just hit reply to any of those emails and it comes directly to my inbox.
- [79:01]
Brad
So that's the way that I keep.
- [79:03]
Unknown
A pulse of the community and how we keep this the ultimate crowdsourced personal finance show. And finally, if you're looking to join an in real life community, we have choose a vi local groups in 300 plus cities all around the world. So head to choose a vi.com local and you'll find a list of all of Those cities in 20 plus countries.
- [79:23]
Brad
All across the world.
- [79:24]
Unknown
And if you're just getting started with FI or you have a family member or a friend who you think would be interested, two easy ways choose a VI episode 100 is kind of our welcome to the FI community. And even though it's a couple years old at this point. It still stands up and it's a really great just starting point to get an understanding of what is financial independence. What are we doing here? Why are we looking to live a more intentional life where we save money and use it as a springboard to live a better life and then choose a VI created a Financial Independence 101 course that's entirely free. Just head to choose fi.comfi101 and again, thanks for listening.