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The Revive Stronger Podcast
Do You Need Periodisation to Build Maximum Muscle?- Samuel Buckner
01:32:34
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- [00:01]
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- [00:27]
Steve
Sam, it's fantastic to have you back on the show. I always like to look back when I've had guests who are repeat guests, which most of my guests are because I get to talk to such fantastic people like yourself. Sam, it was about a year ago that we talked. It never quite feels like as much time as what it is because I think time's just one of those things where it passes. It feels like it passes far too quickly. But you said you're going through a lot of changes with your lab and bits and pieces over there, but hopefully not too stressful for you. How are you doing?
- [00:54]
Sam
Yeah, I'm doing great. Yeah. I think with any lab situation, we have a master's program here, so the longest I can really work with a student is two years while they're here. So, yeah, we're in kind of a transition phase where I'm having large turnover in my research team, which is both exciting and a little bit intimidating. I've had wonderful students every single year I've been here at usf, so I have no doubt that we're going to rebuild and regain momentum like we've always had. But yeah, it's going to be an interesting year. Up ahead with, I have a student, James, who's been working incredibly hard. James is brilliant and very lucky that he joined the lab last semester and he's returning and then we're going to. I told him we're building the team around you and we're going to do some really cool things. So.
- [01:48]
Steve
Nice. Yeah, sounds really good. In regards to your own training and nutrition, how does that tend to look for you? I don't think I've ever spoken to you much about it, but I know you do train, Obviously you eat. How's. How's that been for you?
- [02:01]
Sam
Yeah, I used to probably take my training very, very seriously and I think probably over the last five years for me it's been like work has become the priority, you know? You know, and then my training has become an afterthought. And then in the last two or three years I do all my training Pretty much with Holly. And Holly's fitness goals to me are more important than my own right now because she's very competitive in bodybuilding. So we're both so busy. My training is with her, so I do her workouts. Which means, yeah, I'm training a bit like a bikini competitor at the moment, but that was a neglected area for me. Not bikini, but the lower body was neglected anyway for a year. So it's not necessarily a negative thing. When our schedules do not line up for training together, that's when I'll go hit like a heavy upper body day. Because bikini competitors, they don't need a lot of biceps and triceps. They don't do a lot of chest work. So if I get a workout on my own, it'll be kind of that, like the upper body day that I'm missing from a bikini competitor's training. But yeah, right now I really want to help Holly accomplish her goals. I think she has an Olympia caliber physique and I'd love to, I'd love that for her, you know, so she's, she's picked out a show. I think she's going to do the Tampa Pro. She hasn't announced that yet, I don't think. But she's looking at the schedule and picking her next pro show, which is pretty exciting. So, yeah, nothing. Maybe one day I'll, I'll try to do something meaningful with, with my physique, but just not a priority at the moment.
- [03:52]
Steve
I think that's, that's totally fair. And actually, I mean, good for you. I mean, being that person that can support your partner to achieve their goals. Like, what a great situation for Holly to be in, to have someone to be able to do that in her corner. And yeah, I can't imagine the amount of kind of direct glute work that I like. I'm sprinkling some in for myself because I'm like, ah, maybe that helped the glute striations come through a bit sooner next time I compete. But even that is, I don't know. And tag you along three sets within a lower body workout. I can't imagine the amount of direct glute work that Holly must be doing to kind of get those where they need to be for an Olympia stage.
- [04:28]
Sam
Yeah. And it's also cool to train with someone like her who genetically is just so much more gifted than me as far as how she responds to a training program. And I don't know, I mean, I think she's quite a bit of a unicorn because I've had training partners throughout the years, but none like her. That just grows and, you know, like, she avoids bicep curls completely and still has better bicep peaks than me, you know? Um, so it's. It's also cool to. To see someone with that caliber of genetics and ability and, you know, how our bodies respond and obviously her diet's more dialed in than mine, but how she responds to this program and how I respond, also, completely different.
- [05:18]
Steve
Yeah, I can imagine that being. I would find it really confronting, I think, because of who I am and what my goals are to, like, train with someone who's more genetically blessed in that regard. Like, you're doing almost many things similarly, at least. And actually, if people interested in a deep dive on Holly's training, I think she probably documents it really well. But I also discussed last time she came on her goals and her training for her previous prep, which maybe was a year or so ago at this point as well. But I know she was, like, trying to atrophy, like quads and areas, and they just don't seem to be doing what she wanted. So. Yeah, I wish I had that problem. It's a good problem to have, I feel like. But today we're going to be talking about. I know you kind of reached out to me, like, do a bit of a deep dive into periodization. And interesting enough, I see it as a topic. I think it's like many topics within the fitness industry. They kind of come and they go and they come and they go. And periodization is one that I think has come and gone, and it feels like it's coming back a little bit. And I know many people within even the evidence based space have used periodized models as a proposed way to help grow more muscle. And I know you and James Steele and you've had a bit of a, like, quote, unquote war with Mr. Stone, Dr. Stone over there, who kind of debating somewhat like the role of periodization. So I'm very eager to talk about kind of your updated thoughts, where they are right now. And I don't know where you want to start, Sam, but I was thinking defining periodization for the listeners would be a great place. But I'm. I'm kind of happy to go where you want to go.
- [06:53]
Sam
Yeah, maybe I'll start by defining it and then maybe I'll tell a little bit about the story of how I came to write in this area, because I've written quite a lot, most of which had turned out to be controversial, completely unintentional. And I think the reason I reached out, I just. I was having so much fun in class talking about this. And I often wonder if my class thinks I'm crazy because I'm teaching them these things and then I'm telling them, well, if you sit for this examination, you know, we learned this, but you're going to have to say this and, you know, you're going to have to make, you know, some. You're gonna have to pretend to agree with certain things that some of you. I'm okay if you agree with it. But in. In our class we've had a different perspective. So, yeah, I think my ideas in periodization are a little bit unique. I think some of them have caught on, honestly, which is why I think this could potentially be a really fun conversation. I also know that some of my ideas are so difficult for me to speak. Like, I've written them, I think, quite well sometimes. But some of them are really difficult, I think, to get the point across because there's so much like depth and history on the topic of periodization. But regarding a definition, if you don't mind, I'm going to just read a definition. My former student, Rio Kataoka, who's at Southern Miss, he's a professor there now. Um, in. I think it was 2019, during COVID our lab was shut down so we could not collect data. And I think I had just given a periodization lecture in class. So we were having a lot of discussions on periodization. And I told Rio, I said, why don't we write a paper? And one of our frustrations that I expressed in class and we had some great discussion on was the fact that different people seem to define periodization differently. And if you read one paper, you'll get one definition on periodization. If you read another paper, you'll get a different definition. So what I told Rio to do, and he did such a wonderful job, I said, get every textbook and every paper you can. And I want you to make a table and put the citation and put their definition of periodization. And I can send you this paper. We can link it, I suppose. So. The paper's titled Periodization Variation in the Definition and Discrepancies in Study Design. And what we sought to do in this paper was, for one, we wanted to really understand how is periodization defined? And then we wanted to look at studies that claim to study periodization. We wanted to see if those studies are studying anything close to what the definition says that it is. And ultimately we found that the studies that people talk about these studies, they technically are not studying periodization. If we go on what the definition of periodization is, anyway, I think we had 88 different definitions, and we were really hesitant. We did not want to provide our own definition on the concept because one thing we've really struggled with in this area is people have ownership of this topic. So we really didn't want to leave our print. Like, we wanted to say, hey, this is just us. We're presenting what's out there. But the reviewers were insistent. They said, you guys have gone through all the definitions. Why don't you provide what you think is the best definition? So for the listener, the definition that we came up with, that Rio came up with and is presented in this paper, is that periodization is an organizational approach to training that considers the competing stressors within an athlete's life and creates periods of time dedicated to specific outcomes, for example, strength, hypertrophy, or power. These designated periods are intended to manage the stress associated with exercise while also creating potentiation in the subsequent training phases. Through proper stress management and program design, this approach may attempt to to peak various performance measures at specific times relevant to competition. That's super rewarding, and I acknowledge that. But we felt when we came up with this definition that we had to present all of these concepts, which seem very important for periodization. When I teach it in class, I use this example. From what I can tell, periodization emerged by because strength and conditioning professionals wanted to lift weights and incorporate that with sport. So naturally, across the sports season. And I think American football probably is the easiest example. So within American football, when you start working with the strength and conditioning coach in the off season, you can lift a lot of weights because you're not playing a lot of football. As the season progresses over time, you begin spending more and more time with your sport. So if you think of any traditional model of periodization, what they'll say is volume decreases over time as intensity increases. And intensity in the periodization literature is percentage of 1 RM how heavy the weight is. So across the competitive season, what you're doing in the weight room has to eventually be less volume because you need your athletes recovered because they're playing a lot of football. You're kind of balancing stressors. And if you notice in that definition, a lot of it was the balancing of stressors. Another thing was this idea of phase potentiation. So traditionally, models of periodization would have you, for example, train hypertrophy before strength. The idea being that eight weeks of hypertrophy training would enhance the subsequent eight weeks of strength training. So we kind of had periods. Each of these periods has kind of a different goal and focus. But then overall, at the same time we're trying to manage volume and intensity so that we promote recovery for an athlete. Does that kind of make sense thus far?
- [13:10]
Steve
Yeah, for sure. I think particularly when people think about, when you're a competitive athlete, of course you're going to be pretty exhausted all the time. So there's no way you're going to be able to productively do like an hour or so hypertrophy workout like you could when you don't have that. So it makes, it makes a ton of sense kind of managing those stresses and particularly for sports, like having distinct goals. Yeah, I know you're probably going to talk about bodybuilding being like, well, it's just hypertrophy. But I'd love to hear more.
- [13:39]
Sam
Yeah. So what's quite interesting to me is that makes so much sense to me. Right. That periodization is kind of this way to balance stressors, consider all the stress. Right. And then manage your programming. Right. It's kind of a plan as well, like helps you organize your time into strategic goals in the weight room. What it has become, I believe to a lot of people, not to everybody, but in a large sense I think it's become fancy programming has kind of become synonymous with periodization. And I think why that happened, and this is. I'm going to hope I connect this and this makes sense. In 1981, Stone published a paper, and you mentioned Stone earlier, that studied a periodized program versus a non periodized program. When you read this paper from 1981, it's a six week training study and across the six weeks they had a non periodized group. The non periodized group did three by six for the entire six weeks. So three sets of six reps for the entire six weeks. The periodized group did two weeks. Let me, I have it here. Two weeks of a five by ten. So first two weeks is kind of hypertrophy, then a week of a 5x5, then a 3x3 and then a 3x2. So over that six weeks they decreased volume and they increased the heaviness of the weight, they increased intensity and that was their periodized group. So we have a periodized and a non periodized group. The periodized group in this particular study had greater or more favorable changes in lean body mass measured from underwater weighing. And it also had better strength outcomes. And I think this study kind of set in motion. This is my opinion from what I can tell looking at all the other studies, a series of studies that are six and eight week studies where people just manipulate training variables in different ways and call it periodization. And personally I don't think any of these studies are periodization. And let me tell you why. In the Stone study, they're decreasing volume. Well, within a periodized plan you decrease volume because something else is increasing. In the Stone investigation, they decreased volume to decrease volume for the sake of following a linear plan. The Stone study doesn't tell me what's the goal of that six week, let's just call it a mesocycle, which is a periodization term for like a block of training. In this six week study, for me to know how we should program, I need to know what is the goal of that six weeks. If you tell me the goal is to maximize one RM squat, I'll design a different program than if you tell me the goal is to maximize hypertrophy. So when you break down this study, you have the non periodized group which was not ideal for growth and not ideal for strength. And the results showed that in the periodized group at least they had two weeks of hypertrophy and about four weeks at the end there was decent strength training. And how this has kind of gotten miscommunicated across time is that variation in training of variables, like varying the variables, enhances adaptation. And a lot of people believe that's what makes something periodized. Does that make sense so far, Steve?
- [17:12]
Steve
Yeah, it's like these short term manipulations have been called periodization. When I think you're going to argue that's like you said in your definition, periodization is like specific blocks of long term planning for a specific goal and outcome.
- [17:28]
Sam
Yeah. And I think that's kind of existed across the spectrum. If you look at like the DUP studies they did daily undulating periodization, where I think it was against six or eight week studies where you had a hypertrophy, strength, power or strength, different order of training, and it was called periodization. But I've argued in some of my writings that you could do the same set and rep scheme for eight weeks and that just stagnant sets and reps follow progressive overload, could exist within a larger periodized plan if it lined up with the other stressors that you have. Does that make sense?
- [18:11]
Steve
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. It's interesting because they're almost arguing the periodized plan is the one where you're manipulating variables on a week to week basis, but almost the other plan that was keeping things static is like actually that's a longer term block of training that you could then maybe have sequential with another block that was maybe higher volume, lower intensity. And that would actually be the periodized plan is the study's not long enough to look at periodization really is what I'm kind of thinking.
- [18:38]
Sam
Yeah, I think so too. So if I'm kind of rewind back to when I got involved in imperialization within the literature, we were in our lab. This is back when I was a PhD student in Jeremy Lennecke's lab and we were designing our latest study. And I wish I could remember what study we were designing. It doesn't really matter. But we were designing our next training study. And in our lab, we traditionally did four sets to failure for a given muscle because we wanted to induce growth so we could study growth. We had a new intern in the lab that was from nutrition, and he had just learned in class that the best approach to training is a periodized approach. So excuse me. He said, if we just learn this in class, why are we just doing the same set and rep scheme for this period of time? We should use a periodized plan. And Jeremy, being the good mentor he is, he agreed with him. His name was Brian. And he said, yeah, go find the evidence that that's the case and that's what we'll do. We should do what's best. So he went and he attempted to find evidence that a periodized plan was superior to a non periodized plan. And he came up short. So at our next lab meeting as a group, we kind of discussed, okay, Brian wasn't able to find this piece of evidence. And then he tasked all of us to go look for the evidence. So we all went and we all started reading in the periodization literature. And what we found was a bunch of six and eight week studies that would compare a group that had variation versus a group that had no variation. And often, not always, the group that was called periodized led to greater strength adaptations. But if you looked at those studies, the group that was periodized typically lifted a lot heavier than the group that wasn't periodized. So we looked at that literature and we said, people think this magic thing called periodization is enhancing strength when it looks like lifting heavy is what makes you strong. So we wrote a paper, it was called what Is It Good For? And Kevin Maddox was the lead author of that manuscript. And that was kind of our first dipping our toes into periodization, which came with significant pushback. Because what we've learned is that this topic is very close to A lot of people's hearts. And when you kind of question some of it. We got pretty significant pushback from different groups when we wrote that paper. But I think the message was pretty simple. It was, there is no strong evidence that a periodized approach is superior to a non periodized approach over the timeframes in which it's been examined, which are six, eight, maybe a couple of 12 week studies. And if it is superior, we believed in about every scenario you could explain it by the principle of specificity. The group that lifted a 3 RM got stronger than the group that lifted with an 8 or 10 RM.
- [21:39]
Steve
Yeah, I think that it makes a lot of sense and I think it's why it's so important for it just makes me really think of the joke of people just reading the abstract and they just take away, oh look, periodization was better. This is what they did to periodize. And funnily enough, I guess if they actually follow the philosophy of periodization is better and they think they're periodizing by following the thing that was better, I guess the results probably will be better. But it's actually not periodization to your definition that they're doing. It is variation and specificity to the goal at hand.
- [22:10]
Sam
Yeah, if periodization was better, it wasn't for the reason that they thought it was better, basically.
- [22:15]
Steve
Yeah.
- [22:17]
Sam
So interestingly enough, when we published that paper, the feedback that we received because we wrote a couple other things and there was a paper written in sports medicine that was kind of a critique of some of our work. And it basically said, we're conflating programming with periodization. And they said, okay, your critique is invalid because you're just talking about programming and you're not talking about periodization. And we responded to that paper with a letter to the editor and basically said, we agree with you. We agree that these are programming studies, but these are the studies that you use in the textbook when you make a statement that periodization is superior to a non periodized program. So all we can critique are the studies that exist, and the studies that exist are all these studies that you and I were now agreeing are programming studies. So it was kind of this strange moment because what it felt like to me was, hey, you guys don't know what you're talking about. None of this is even periodization. And then I go read the thing you wrote previously though. This is what you cited when you made these statements. You can't critique anything other than their citations. And that kind of led to our next paper, which was we titled It I love the title of this paper is Periodization Programming Periodization or Programming? The title of the paper is a mouthful. And to me, I was watching something happen that was quite interesting. And I even remember I had a. There was like a three part periodization podcast, I think it was the Iron Culture podcast. And I heard in real time studies that used to be called periodization were now being called periodization programming studies. And it felt to me like, okay, it feels like we're moving the goalpost, but we're not acknowledging that we're moving the goalpost. Right. If what was once called periodization, we're now calling it periodized programming, then we need to make that official and define it so people understand what we're talking about. So my student Blake, he did a great job on this paper. And the point of the paper was to say, okay, now there's these new terms that are emerging. We have something called periodization, which is like a stress management approach where you try to balance stressors and make sure you decrease volume when necessary to promote recovery and peak athletes. And then we have periodized programming, which is almost taking this big idea of volume, intensity, compressing it to six and eight weeks and manipulate things in the short term. And I think a lot of people would now call all of these studies, the studies that are the literature as we know it on periodization. I think a lot of people would call these periodized programming, but where it gets extremely confusing. Stephen, I'm sure I've already lost the listener, but hopefully they're still along for this ride. You can have non periodized programming exist within a periodized program and it might be the best way to program. Right? Which is like coming full circle and saying, I don't even know if we need all these studies. So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.
- [25:46]
Steve
I can definitely see how it gets confusing. And I think part of it is, I don't know, it feels like some people are holding on to wanting the studies that have been done to have periodization within them. It's not like periodized programming. Why can't they just be programming like full stop? Why does period. Because the periodized, like the periodization, like you said it right at the start, is like longer term programming is shorter term periodized programming. That's just programming. So if we're including periodization in that, it just feels like adding that word again because someone would like to add it. I don't know the people that have suggested it or are using it, but that's the way when you describe it, it's like, oh, some people are holding on to wanting those studies to mean periodization, not programming. But it sounds like those short term manipulations, it's like variation with things. It's something I would call programming. Just like you said with the dup, they're short term manipulations in rep range. So it's not like a long term plan of a specific goal or outcome. Unless those weeks were stretched into months, then that would be more periodized.
- [26:49]
Sam
And to know if something is properly periodized, you need to know the context within that. Like where did that eight weeks exist? And if you don't know what came before it and you don't know what's coming after it, and you also don't know what existed alongside it, then you don't know if any programming study was truly fitting into a proper periodized program. Because I think knowing all of these factors is essential for understanding what periodization is for sure.
- [27:20]
Steve
A question that I have that comes to mind for me at least is do you have reasons you think the one, the periodized programming, if we want to use that term, was shown to be superior to the non periodized kind of static volume, intensity and frequencies?
- [27:37]
Sam
Yeah, I think for one, there's not a lot of studies that compare periodized to non periodized because pretty early on it was concluded that a periodized approach is superior. But I don't think a lot of the early studies found that a periodized plan was superior for lean body mass. But when they started measuring actual muscle with imaging techniques like MRI, CT, there were no differences for muscle growth. So there's no evidence, to my knowledge, or no compelling evidence to my knowledge, that a periodized programming approach or variation in volume and intensity within a short period of time does anything meaningful or important for muscle growth. With regards to strength, periodized programming approach was often superior, but it was simply because the periodized group got the opportunity to lift heavy and the non periodized group never did. And let me give an example. So somewhere here I think I have some notes with some studies and I do these thought experiments in my class where I say if I gave you the goal of writing the program that would maximize strength over six weeks, how would you do it? So a lot of these studies, for example we have o', Brien, Byrd and Stone, they had a non periodized group that did 11 weeks of a three by six. So that's the non periodized group. The periodized group did four weeks of a five by 10. So I would call that a hypertrophy block, they did weeks four through eight, three by five with one set of 10 after they finished that. And weeks eight through 11 were three by two with one set of 10 following. So the periodized group got to lift heavy. The non periodized group just did a three by six. Well, what if you designed a group that also was not periodized but favored lifting heavy? Right. Maybe even they had less training frequency. They trained with less frequency, but they just lifted heavy. They did a three by three for the entire 11 weeks. I think you get the same strength. So like by design, it kind of unintentionally favored the periodization groups. And that's not one study, Steve. That's literally all of the studies that compare non periodized programming to periodized programming. And using study design, we could come up with a study that would show that it is the same. You know, and you kind of see that a lot. Like I've been seeing it in different areas of science as well, where you can make something look like it's better. But you, you kind of designed it that way. Right? You designed it so one group would look more favorable than the other. And I'm not saying they intentionally did that. I just think they compared a somewhat decent program to the most arbitrary program that exists, three by six for the entire training block.
- [30:43]
Steve
Yeah, that makes sense. And I know it's just making me think about hypertrophy specifically. I know you wrote about this in your paper. It was the myth of periodization. And you're kind of thinking about what would be the like when you consider what drives hypertrophy. Is there any reason periodization specifically would aid in that? And so when you're talking through these different eight week programs, I'm like, like my head just goes towards whichever one probably did the most volume is probably going to. Ended up leading to the more, more lean mass.
- [31:15]
Sam
Yeah. And it's. I'm having a moment that I had in class several times this past semester. So me and you are talking about programming studies, but we're calling it periodization because that's kind of what we've been trained to do. Right. And this is where like I struggle. Like this is the literature, this is what we have. And we can sit here and have a discussion and call it periodization, where we could end the podcast and I'll go home and I'll tell Holly, we talked about all the periodization studies, which means we never talked about periodization. And that's just how my mind works. Right. Because at the end of the day, I don't think these studies are actually studying periodization. I think Stone shrunk it down. He created a model to try to study it, and then somewhere it got lost. Personally, I really think it got lost what periodization was. And now we have dozens and dozens and dozens of studies that are just programming studies. And it's so interesting to me because when I read some of these papers and they employ a strategy, they're not employing it with purpose. Right. If you're decreasing volume, but you could have kept volume high, but you decreased it so you could follow a periodized model, you might have missed out on a bunch of adaptation. And these studies would need a group that didn't do that to really show, hey, what we did was impressive. It did help the cause. Can I give you a parallel example that's popping into my head that's relevant today? It's kind of like the frustration I got when I heard content creators making content on the new lengthened partial drop set CAF paper. Have you read this paper yet?
- [33:06]
Steve
Yeah, I'm aware of it.
- [33:07]
Sam
Yeah, so. And maybe you share my frustration, maybe you don't yet. Maybe you will after I explain my frustration. But I saw many big content creators making posts and I hadn't read the paper yet, but I saw Lane Norton break down the study and he described the methods. Then he said, you can get the same growth with half the sets if you used like the partial drop sets. And I thought to myself, I have to read this paper based on how he explained the methods. That doesn't seem like a realistic conclusion. And then I read the paper and it was a group that did four to six traditional sets or a group that did like two to three sets with length of partial drop sets. They were volume matched, so they did the same amount of volume. But the message on social media was what? This group did half the sets and got the same growth. It's a conclusion you can't actually make based on the study because you would need a third group that did traditional training and only did three sets. Because how do you. You have no idea if all you know is they grew the same. Right? It's completely possible that the traditional group just did three sets they didn't need to do. All you knew is they grew the same. And it was so frustrating to me because it's like the purpose of the methods was to volume match, but then when there was no difference, it was made about, well, they did less sets. And this happens so often, Steve. So many papers that came out just this year have employed that Same thing where they divide it by amount of time or find a conclusion that you can't actually pull away from the study design and how I got there from periodization. Well, the periodization studies also lack that group to make the claim that I think people would like to make. They would like to make the claim in these prioritization studies that decreasing the volume really helped to promote recovery. So that at the six week post test training Mark, they grew more or they had better strength. You need often need more groups to make claims that people want to make based on these studies.
- [35:30]
Steve
It's so well put because when you were talking me through it, I was like, I don't know where your disagreement is, but as soon as you said, hey, we don't know what would have happened with three just full ROM sets versus the three that dropped into partials, they could have grown the same. We need another group to say that because I think probably a lot of the people who are talking about that paper, myself included, just thinking, well, more sets, more growth, that's kind of where their head goes. They're like, oh, clearly they grew more because they did all of those sets. But like, exactly as you said. We just don't know that. And that's hard. Also, I guess I can't remember off the top of my head, but I'm presuming that study didn't use like it wasn't in subject design, like it was two different groups or did they subject in. It was within subject. So then you need a third calf, don't you?
- [36:20]
Sam
I think it was 16. I think it was 16 people within subject. So they had 32, 32 calves. You could do a within between where you still have two conditions. You just need more people. And statistically it takes some more sophisticated analysis. But again, I love the paper. I'm fine with the paper. I'm not fine with how people are interpreting it on social media because I know I'm getting on a tangent here, but this is a fun one. I keep seeing this thing where they divide the growth over the number of sessions or over the total number of minutes in the gym, as if that time in those contractions are all allocated the same. Like for both groups, they probably got most of the growth on their first and second set and then it plateaued. And like it's, it's, it's such a weird thing to me how mathematically we'll make something look better. And I would suspect if we put a third group in that did this three traditional sets, I think growth would also have been probably the same. And I am a stickler and I am probably a tougher critic than most people. But it's about what you can claim based on your study design. And all that study can say is these things were the same. Then you can say, I personally think this is more efficient. But you don't have proof of that.
- [37:48]
Steve
Yeah, it does sound. I can't think of a good example of it right now, but it's. Well, I guess an example within that literature itself is people will say, hey, look, lengthened partials have grown these muscles better potentially. And then they'll say everything responds just the same. It's like, well, you're jumping there because we don't have evidence to suggest that you at least have to caveat and be like, hey, because we've seen maybe some superior growth through length and partial training of these muscles possibly will see it here too. But if you don't use that word, then yeah, you're just, you're trying to sound more confident in something than what you should be.
- [38:24]
Sam
Yeah, yeah. And that'd be a big can of worms for me to dive back into all those studies. But I do have disagreements on a lot of the interpretation of a lot of those studies.
- [38:35]
Steve
And I think your disagreement from my perspective, I'm very much an outsider to this. I'm not obviously an academic like you are, but I think sometimes your disagreements come. People, I don't know, they, I think they view them as really. I don't know, it's like a, I view it like as a coach, I critique my clients form to make it better. And if they were to react to be like, oh, like Steve's having a go at me, that's kind of how I feel. Like you're looking at these studies and trying to give feedback to make them better. And I feel like people are like, ah, Sam's having a go at us. But actually you just, you've got best, the best interests of everyone at heart. That's the kind of way I'm seeing it. And because I think you're seeing things like a coach does that the trainee or the other academic maybe isn't seeing at the time. And with your. Because I don't know if you feel like people are doing it to jump on purpose. I sometimes think people are jumping because they aren't kind of got that third eye to like give them that perspective that you're, you're presenting here.
- [39:32]
Sam
Yeah. And I, I've been, I've been critical, but it's, it's only of PhDs who in my opinion their responsibility is to provide the most cautious and caveat view of their own findings. Right. So I think if not another researcher, we hold ourselves to a really high standard. And I think particularly if you're going to present yourself as an authority, which already gives me caution. If someone wants to be an authority, I want to be a thinking mind that is trying to learn things here. But if someone uses authority and uses the authority that comes with their credentials and their degree, I'm already more cautious. And then when data is massively oversold and some of those credentialing are used to create authority within those recommendations, that's something that bothers me. I've been quiet, radio silence and I'm still going to be me doing this podcast isn't me coming out to get now I, I'm not like that. But I, I think I've learned that PhD content creators, they're not making content to have dialogue with people like me. They're making content for the clicks, for the views, for attention. And that's why I've mostly kind of pulled away and said, okay, I'll make my difference by doing studies. And you do enough good work, you can be ignored online, I suppose, but you can't be ignored over and over again if you do good work. And I'm not saying that approach is the correct one, but it's the one that better served me for this past year. So yeah, that's been kind of my approach to it.
- [41:35]
Steve
Yeah, I'm, I don't know why my, my head goes to an analogy of you get these bodybuilders that are all about the pro card, they chase it, they'll travel to different shows to just get the pro card so that then they can get the sponsorship or draw in more clients because they have that, that card to their name. And then you get the bodybuilders that they're like a bodybuilder's bodybuilder where they're just like, I just want to be my absolute best, do the shows I love, I'll turn up. If I have a pro worthy physique and no one better turns up, I get the card, whatever. Like, it's not about the card. It's about the process of being the best bodybuilder I can be. And I can definitely see that the appeal and especially how evidence based and science based training has grown so much where someone's just like, don't really care about the PhD in learning. I just want that. So then I have the authority. And then I can maybe do studies that I can then sell X, Y and Z to. To. To grow. And I think probably they lost themselves along the way, potentially. Some of those individuals.
- [42:35]
Sam
We're all. We're all at risk of that happening. And I, you know, I took a. I took a lesson from. From my mentor, who I think I've probably shared this story on here before, but he used to go to these big seminars where he was treated. He said he was treated like a celebrity as a scientist, you know, and he always cautioned me or he cautioned himself, but I learned from seeing it. He says, be careful. You don't start believing what they say, because if everyone tells you you're the goat, you're the best ever, oh, you're a genius, you start to believe it. And over time, I think that might actually reflect in your opinions and the strength of your opinions, and I think we're all susceptible to that. So I always have a couple people in my corner to remind me how not smart I really am. And I think that's really, really important with academia and communicating data like this.
- [43:34]
Steve
Hi, guys. Steve here. Just wanted to take a moment of your time to remind you of our online coaching service. At Revive Stronger, we pride ourselves on providing personalized service that will take your physique and knowledge to the next level. If you're interested, check the description and sign up. Yeah, there's definitely that fine balance of having enough kind of. I don't know if it's ego, but enough confidence to put yourself out there and speak your truth and what you know, but then not having it fall into, well, I guess arrogance and, yeah, I guess drinking your own Kool Aid a little bit too much and getting a bit cocky. So it's great to have people in your corner that can kind of ground you, as you mentioned, and students.
- [44:14]
Sam
I've had students.
- [44:15]
Steve
Yeah.
- [44:16]
Sam
So, yeah.
- [44:18]
Steve
And then in that sense, like your mentor has for you, you can mentor them about how you feel like they would best serve the scientific community, essentially is. That's. That's kind of the roles you guys are definitely playing in regards to, I guess, this periodization topic. Do you think? Obviously, a lot of people have proposed. I think even actually, and I. I'm sorry, Brad, if I misquote him here, but in the Max Muscle plan, I have his. His book there, and I. I think both versions of it. I think he actually has periodized plans within there. I can't remember the specifics of it, but I think there were like, strength, lower volume Phases and then like maybe more like, what's it called, metabolic stress style phases, short rest periods, higher reps, that sort of thing as like a proposed way to like use periodization for a bodybuilder. And I'm not saying that Brad agrees that this is still the best plan. Everyone should follow it. But do you think things like that, they could still work, but maybe not for the reasons people think?
- [45:23]
Sam
Yeah. So if I were to try to appeal or apply periodization to a bodybuilder, I think it'd go like this. It would be okay. When do you want to compete again? Right. With periodization, with my students, I always say you have to start with the big picture. How much time do I have? So, Steve, if you were to tell me I want to compete in about a year, well, then I can draw out 12 months and I could take that 12 months and I'll say, okay, what are some strategic goals that you have? And maybe you say to me, well, I have this body part that I want to bring up. This is a big priority. So I think what periodization would be in this context would be, okay, we're going to create a 12 week mesocycle that's going to have really high volume. I know you have good quads, but I'm just going to use your quads as an example. We're going to do, we're going to do a quad focused mesocycle. Now, it wouldn't be smart, I don't think, for you to have really, really high quad volume for the entire year. Right. So I think periodization would be okay. We're going to divide our time up into eight or 12 week blocks and each block's going to kind of have a goal and we're going to reevaluate after these different mesocycles and adjust moving forward. So it would be kind of trying to construct this plan. And then again, you have the 12 weeks, you know, oh, I want to start my prep this many weeks out. So we put that mark on the calendar and then you kind of program backwards based on when you know you need to be recovered by which is leading into competition. But in prep, things are going to change as well because your calories are going to change. So periodization in my mind in that context is just the organization, like dividing up time, looking at all the factors you need to consider as you're working your program into your life, preparing for that competition. And then maybe from your quad focus stage, you go into the next muscle cycle, which still has moderate volume on quads but you're also making sure to up the volume on some of your other muscle groups that you also value and that could use some additional volume. And then, you know, your muscle cycles keep progressing till you're in prep and then your next mesocycle reflects the prep calories. Right. So I think something like that would be how I would incorporate periodization into bodybuilding. Would that. Is that how you envisioned it or is that different than.
- [48:01]
Steve
Yeah, I wonder if the way I kind of view it for myself is like periodization for bodybuilders is mostly just for like a fatigue management from a psychological physiological thing. But it's, it's honestly mostly programming. Like, you kind of have your. Because in like periodization literature, hypertrophy is maybe a phase, not a goal. Whereas for bodybuilder, hypertrophy is always the goal. And then it's a case of you could have specialization phases as you mentioned. And I, I don't love specializing. I have like. Because I want everything to grow, like always pretty much. Obviously for someone like Holly, she, her program is a specialization type program, but probably never. They're always going to be the areas that she probably needs to bring up. So I mostly kind of almost have the micro cycle, the split set, and then just every week trying to kind of progressively overload where possible and then make small variations to manage fatigue. Like, I don't know, my knees are a bit beat up, so I'm going to go higher in reps this kind of few weeks to mitigate some of that tendonitis because Sam wants me to bring up my quads and they've been taking a pound or what have you, but kind of just small variations through like a rep range, maybe here or there, an exercise selection swap, and then just like you said, with volume more autoregulating that phase by phase, like maybe your life stress is a bit higher, so bring it a little bit down. Or like you said, going into a diet phase. So it's like, okay, as recovery's going down, we can see kind of your reps are dropping off a lot. Set to set. Maybe it's like you're not getting what you should out of those. Let's bring that down. Or potentially using like a localized deload for. It could be quads again because the knees are not happy. But everything else is recovering really well and progressing, so keep that going. So I kind of, yeah, don't use much periodization apart from like a plan of like you said, if someone wants to step on stage. I'm also Looking at that's more like a diet, almost like they need to be about that weight. So we're going to map out a blueprint backwards from that weight where they need to be kind of on a week to month basis. And then the goal of training is just like trying to provide the best stimulus at that time for a manageable amount of fatigue. And then more of those, I guess, periodized programming, if they want to use that term, manipulations to keep the person moving forward.
- [50:24]
Sam
Well, in a lot of ways you could argue that periodization for bodybuilding becomes incredibly simplified because you don't have the other competing sport. So, like, considering, like the. If you look in a textbook at like a figure for periodization, and I'll show you what the figures will look like because they're in every textbook. It's just three lines, and one of the lines is volume, one of the lines is intensity, and the third line is technique. And what technique is referring to in those figures is sport. And you'll always notice that technique gradually increases over time. And your volume, intensity, which are your resistance training factors, they're balancing with technique. Well, in bodybuilding, your lifting is your sport. So now you're just like, is it? And I've had these discussions in my classroom so much. Does periodization just become programming? Like, it. Is it just like this flexible autoregulated programming approach that we can call it periodization, we can call it whatever we want. It's just an intelligent approach. Like, I think at the end of the day, it's just an intelligent approach to training that does care about recovery. I've had conversations with some professionals that it's like, they say, well, did you consider fatigue and did you care about recovery then? It was periodized. And there's some thought that any intelligent program is periodized inherently because recovery is considered. And. And I get frustrated with that because then it's like, well, then you can't really study this because it's just more of a. Like, everything is periodized. If it works and makes sense. Yeah, I've kind of got backed in that corner before. It's like, well, if that's true, then it's going to be really hard to actually study this concept. And I think one of the reasons periodization is difficult to study is because it is difficult to take a group of people and train them to the point of actually needing a deload. Like, I'm not saying it hasn't been done, but the body's ability to recover is pretty unbelievable. And those studies are intimidating. To do right. If I wanted to push people to the brink, and I would argue I did it with our recent volume study doing the 45 weekly sets on quads. That was a lot. But then the study would have to be double the length to actually employ some necessary periodization because hey, we were training with too high a volume. We can't maintain that we have to decrease volume, which I think would probably be the case if I tried to double our, the length of our volume study that we just did. So those studies are intriguing. I think those studies should be done. I'm not, I don't want to do them. I really don't want to do those studies, Steve, because they're a lot of work for. I mean I probably will be the one that ends up doing these studies, but they're so difficult to do in practice.
- [53:37]
Steve
That's really interesting because it's something I've been reflecting on over the last, I don't know how long, but I used to follow a little bit of a paradigm of it was very much like an accumulation of volume to a point of attempting an overreaching period to get the benefits of overreaching, then deloading, getting that super compensation effect and then kind of going again. And I was just reflecting upon that and some of the thoughts and logic behind like how quickly does the body really adapt? Do you really need to push volume to an unsustainable amount? How much am I getting from like overreaching? How much do I enjoy that? When I reflected upon what leads to muscle growth and I kind of drew back and I was like, kind of just feel like I want to get to an amount of volume and work totally within the gym. That's pushing myself close to my limit. But I can adapt and recover from it over time and kind of hold there as until I need to make a fatigue management programming variable swap and not have to take a full on deload. And I'd always thought part of the reason I deload is because clearly every week you're overloading, you're accumulating fatigue. And I know you've written a paper on questioning does fatigue accumulate or not. And I just, for whatever reason I was like if you overload, surely you accumulate fatigue. But then similar to you said once I kind of trialed this sustainable volume as an approach and not pushing just sets beyond that I could. I haven't had to do a full on like what people would think of as a deload, like a whole week of easy training or off for over A year at this stage now. And I push like, most of my muscle groups are 20 plus sets per week, pretty much 0 reps in reserve on average. And I don't think I'm special or anything. I just think people have done in their head. There's something special about kind of overreaching and super compensation and then accumulative fatigue. And so, like, duh, you have to deload at some point. So I just started to question that in my own practice. And I think your paper helped bring about some of those extra thoughts where I think some people think of like the fitness fatigue model, for example, as, like, that's a thing that is real. And like, as you train for fitness adaptations, you get more fatigue. And at some point that fatigue is gonna, like, be too much and your performance is gonna drop. And. But it's like you said in studies, it's hard to get people to the point where that's happening. And I found it really hard myself as well. Unless, I don't know, life really takes a turn for the worse and I sleep four hours for a few nights, which hasn't happened, but I can imagine that then really making that occurrence.
- [56:11]
Sam
Yeah, I threw a lot of truth.
- [56:15]
Steve
I'd love your thoughts.
- [56:16]
Sam
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That paper was another. I think our lab was closed down and we had to come up with some ideas. And again, so many of my papers come from listening to a podcast where. And I hardly listen to any anymore, but I think during COVID everyone was listening to different podcasts and just living a different way. But anyway, I listened to a podcast on fatigue accumulation, and it was like two or three hours. And nowhere in that two to three hour podcast did I hear them ever describe what accumulates. They just always simply said fatigue. And it's like, okay, well what is accumulating? Well, fatigue's accumulating. Yeah, but what is fatigue? And I test Rio Kataoka. I think it was Rio. Yeah, Rio. I said, we need to find out what they're talking about. Because surely if we have all, like, people are so compelled to say, you're accumulating fatigue. Surely we can point and say, this is what we mean. You're accumulating. And you've read the paper so you know, that we couldn't pin it down. And there was no, like, really clear evidence that there's this thing that's accumulating other than calling it fatigue and saying, we don't really know it's just fatigue. And I was interested because I don't think in a resistance training context it's ever really been demonstrated like an accumulation of fatigue. I'm not saying the idea doesn't make some sense. I'm not saying from a coaching perspective these things can be helpful and important. But I'm saying from an evidence standpoint, nobody has been able to satisfy my curiosity of what actually accumulates. And my understanding of, you know, fatigue research is that fatigue has traditionally been defined as an accumulation of something or a depletion of something. So in that paper that you referenced, we went through like every mechanism of like acute fatigue from like a metabolite that accumulates, right? Whether it be integrinic phosphate or hydrogen, when you split ATP molecules and contract, you get byproducts. Those byproducts cause fatigue, but they don't accumulate over time. Then we looked into the depletion hypothesis of energy substrates that we deplete. There's no accumulation of depletion. We very quickly replenish. So then I think in that paper we explored some different central mechanisms, right? So, um, that also fell short of providing me any compelling thing to point to to say, yeah, fatigue accumulates and it's related to the central nervous system and our ability to activate our muscles. Most of the literature, Steve, interestingly enough, and I'm no expert, but from my literature search and my reading, most of the stuff on central, like central drive going down, like you contract your muscle, but at this moment you can't contract all of your muscle. That research is primarily acute in nature. So it's like within a session we know you experience fatigue and you can't activate all your motor units. There's not like a compelling base of literature that suggests over this training block, your nervous system is now limiting your ability to contract your muscles because you're just too fatigued. And ultimately in that paper we kind of leaned on this idea that maybe we're conflating several different things here. Maybe there's a component of like muscle damage that's lasted longer than you anticipate. Maybe there's even a component of injury that you're experiencing. Like if you do a heavy, high volume training block, you might have injury to connective tissue. And that, be it through pain, like nociceptors or other afferent signals, is going to communicate with your brain and limit your strength. So I didn't find that you accumulate fitness and you accumulate fatigue. That doesn't seem to be how adaptation works. You have stimulus and recovery. But the way we spoke about it, I was giving the analogy in a recent conversation and the Way I heard it spoke about was as if you train and you just imagine a hole and you just throw something in it and then you train again, you throw some more in it, and it's just like you're building up and building up this fatigue. And I've never thought of training that way. And then I couldn't find strong evidence that that was the case. So maybe that fatigue you think you've accumulated is mostly the fatigue from these last few bouts combined maybe with chronic breakdown of some of your connective tissue, which I think leans closer to injury than like classic fatigue. And maybe you can find some structural model of fatigue that says structured breakdown is fatigue. But you know, I've trained upper body too much and gotten tendonitis. You know, that's connective tissue, that's overuse. It's a slightly different thing. And the majority of the overtraining literature is in distance sports, right? So like Ironman training, you gotta be careful because you're doing hours upon hours of training every single day. The resistance training literature will let you down, in my opinion, on this topic. And the two most famous studies that I'm aware of, and I'm sure you've come across these with as much as you spent probably as much time in literature as I have at this point, with as many people you've spoken to and podcast you've done. And I know you do reading as well, but the Fry studies. So Andy Fry did two overtraining studies. In the first over training study, he had people do 95% of 1 RM on squat 5 times a week. Was it 8 reps and 95% of 1 RM 5 times a week for 3 weeks and I was in a squat movement and they failed to induce overtraining. The study was a failure. So imagine doing 95% of one RM doing that eight times and then coming in Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and doing that for three weeks and their strength was maintained. At the end of the study, they failed to over train. The subsequent follow up study, they increased it to just doing a 1 RM 10 times. So they did 101 RMS every single day, I want to say for two straight weeks. And they finally achieved. They waited like a couple of days and strength was still depressed. So they believe that they achieved over training. Like where? Okay, we've reached this point where they are no longer able to perform, even though we've taken some rest days. And I think that just illustrates how incredibly difficult this research is to do because. And there is hope in this story, right? Because we're so good at recovering that it takes a lot to bury a person and make it so we can say they have classic textbook signs of overtraining. So again, I'm no expert on the fatigue literature, but I do think about it a lot because our textbook, they give us these models and these models, I have to teach them in class. And yeah, maybe they're useful for a coach, but a lot of them are not backed by loads and loads of evidence.
- [64:01]
Steve
Yeah, I think it's. I don't know why this always comes to mind, but something. I watch some trash TV with my partner and Love languages comes up a lot on these programs and I heard it. I was, oh, it makes sense. Like, yeah, I kind of align with that. Love language or whatever and you align with that one. And then I was like, just thinking about, is there any science to back up love Languages? No, there's nothing. It just sounds good. And unfortunately, I think there's a lot of like logic and it seems rational, similar to really periodization as it spawned at the start where it, like it came before studies even were looking at it being something useful. It's like. And now it's. It's like, well, of course periodization is useful. It's like, yeah, but actually it's just because it's been around a long time that doesn't necessarily guarantee that we have research that can definitely say, hey, it's. It's absolutely something you should be doing for a variety of goals. Similar here with that kind of fitness and fatigue model. Like, it just really, like, it made sense to me and I, I liked it. It allowed me to program in a certain way. And I think sometimes they have, like you say, they have holes. They don't have strong evidence behind them. And something like that forgets, like the repeated bout effect, like how adaptable we are to a certain stimulus. So even, yeah, like a fatigue accumulates. It just sounds like, of course it accumulates. And like you said, like, what even is that? We haven't got a definition of what that even is. So I think it's so useful to have people like yourself, Sam, that just really dive into these things. And I think for me, at least as a coach and as a trainee, is not getting carried away with some of the things I hear and really looking at what's happening in real time in practice. What am I seeing? What am I feeling like, do I need a deload or is it just week six and I've got in my head that I follow this paradigm, like, how. How are my Joint connective tissue. How is my performance, how's my sleep, my energy, my motivation to train? Am I in that like slightly overreached state where maybe I need to kind of pull back? If I'm not, why would I, why would I pull back? It wouldn't make sense. If the goal is to keep growing, like pulling back training doesn't make sense.
- [66:04]
Sam
Yeah, I agree. I think what I've learned, and I guess I'm probably coming up on 10 years in this stuff now, a lot of like the classic strength and conditioning principles that they obviously bleed over into what we love because like science, the science of lifting started in strength and conditioning largely. Right. And a lot of it's just tradition based. And because it's been that way for a long time, that's what I've learned. And you know, when I started questioning periodization, along along with that came the general adaptation syndrome. And I think the general adaptation syndrome is such a good example because I chased down to the first paper that connected it to exercise. And once I did that, I realized that this story got lost over time and we lost sight of what the genital adaptation syndrome was. So a lot of people are familiar with the alarm reaction or alarm resistance exhaustion, which is the three stages of the general adaptation syndrome. And what our textbooks tell us is that to avoid exhaustion and prevent overtraining, you employ periodization. So instead of this curve going downward, you can super compensate and have enhanced adaptation. Have you seen the curve before, Steve, for the general option syndrome?
- [67:26]
Steve
Yeah.
- [67:26]
Sam
So like the alarm resistance, what was so interesting is that curve came from Hans Selye, the same exact curve, except his curve was the size of the thymus of a rodent when exposed to toxic doses of drugs. So you injected a mouse or rat with formaldehyde and it had to be a toxic dose, but. And their thymus became involute, it shrunk. Right. So that same curve, the thymus involuting, we call you, have muscle soreness, right. And fatigue. And then he, he keep giving the rat formaldehyde. And despite continued dose of this toxic stressor, he would resist death. So the thymus size would return to normal. In our textbooks, we just replace that with, you're going to adapt, you're going to get muscle size and strength adaptations. And then if the stress was continued for long enough periods of time, eventually the rodent would no longer have ability to resist dying and they'd reach the exhaustion phase. And that's where the rodent died. Exhaustion. So we replaced exhaustion with the word Overtraining. And we justified like this is if you read your textbooks, the physiological rationale for periodization is the general adaptation syndrome. And you must manage stress. And that's why managing stress should still be the core principle underlying periodization, because that's what Hans Elye's research was all about. But you can trace this in papers and maybe in a different podcast. This one's actually probably too boring. I'll do it for my own YouTube channel that doesn't exist. But historically, you can find the first paper that made those connections and literally just replaced the meaning with something different. And then the next paper reiterated what that paper said. And the third paper was a stone review in 19 something or other that adopted it as a fundamental principle underlying adaptations to resistance training. And when I questioned that, it was a whirlwind of controversy and not understanding history, not appreciating history. And it's like, I understand and appreciate it, but we could have still gotten it wrong. And we're actually working on a paper right now because we were re reviewing some of the things they've written to my critique of the genital syndrome. We're writing a paper right now that the working title is actually, I don't know what the working title is, but the working concept is we can get rid of the genital adaptation syndrome as the underlying principle of periodization. It doesn't mean periodization is wrong. And I think what I've learned is if that goes away, people are threatened that the entire concept goes away. And it's like, this can make sense and at the same time this cannot make sense as the reason why you think this is good. And it was just clinging to a model that was popular at that time and attaching it to it as a justification. And I think way back when that happened, that was wrong. It should have never happened. But that's what's in our textbooks. And I think maybe the fitness fatigue and I haven't done a deep dive on it, but fitness fatigue was an evolution of that general adaptation syndrome. At least that's how it's told in our textbooks. And it's probably a little bit of the same thing that tradition and convention, it served just fine. And coaches find that it's helpful. So why upset the cart? And I guess maybe sometimes I'm the annoying person that decides to upset the cart because something bothers me enough about it that like, okay, but how we get here. And yeah, the genital syndrome has been one of the my most fun, like, things I've done in the Literature is like the deep dive on that. And it's so interesting when you literally dig to the bottom and realize this is not at all what I thought it was going to be. And we still, I think, have work in that area because it still exists in our textbooks in its current form. I finally had gotten the opportunity to edit a textbook chapter and I'm going to try to. It's a careful process. Right. You want to acknowledge tradition and convention, introduce new ideas without pushing the old ideas out. So all I want is mine to exist alongside the current ones for people to make their own decision. I don't want to delete it yet until more people agree with me, but hopefully that's where we're headed.
- [72:14]
Steve
I have the book the Stress of Life by Hans Selye.
- [72:17]
Sam
Oh, yeah.
- [72:20]
Steve
And to think, yeah, periodization is based on that concept. And I think it does, like you said, it still has merit. It makes sense. But to use that exact like graphing that is so specific to, like a rat being poisoned to then like biology at large. And like every single, like person and body or system responds the same way to stress. And that's therefore what we're going to follow. I can see why that wouldn't be something that you'd think is the best idea. Do you have a different model proposed or is it just you're proposing that this isn't something that we should follow just like blanketly, because it's not specific to what we're applying it to?
- [73:01]
Sam
Yeah, I think the model is going to depend on the adaptation that we're talking about. So, for example, is it Weckenridge, his textbook on molecular physiology? I think it's Henning Weckenridge. It's a great textbook. I don't know if I have the most current version. Half my textbooks, students borrow them and then I permanently lose them. Anyway, in his textbook he writes how the super compensation hypothesis of adaptation lacks evidence in that there's no evidence that any like, applied adaptation, muscle growth, muscle strength, requires you to go backwards, to go forwards. Which is kind of what the hypothesis implies, Right. It implies you have to lose it to come back better. And he does a really nice job of like breaking down the science. And he says, rather than the super compensation of hypothesis of adaptation, we propose that molecular signaling explains muscle growth. Right? So in the muscle growth instance, instead of gelatation syndrome, it's understanding molecular signaling and the trigonal molecular signaling to understand why we grow. Whereas that model would suggest, if we subscribe to supercompensation, it would say decreasing Muscle size increases muscle size. Or it would say decreasing strength is actually what increases strength. Now you can argue, yes, strength is decreased when we're fatigued, but that's not our strength. I don't think it actually decreases. It's in that moment not able to express itself. So with strength I would again approach it on an individual basis and say, well, strength is a combination of mechanisms. From a coaching standpoint, I think there's probably still some value to be teased out with the fitness fatigue model. I just think it can probably be refined and maybe we could add some caveats to make it more applicable. I've done a much greater deep dive into general adaptation syndrome than I have fitness fatigue. So I don't want to speak too much on it, but I do know there's been some pretty good critique of the super compensation hypothesis as a working model which kind of in some textbooks gets blanketed as the explanation for just adaptation full stop, right? And all adaptations are so incredibly different. I spoke to Bill Campbell down the hall who I think you spoke to recently before I lectured on this years ago. I said, bill, what can you tell me about supercompensation for glycogen? And he told me, well you can maybe increase glycogen through a super compensation protocol where you deplete it and it comes back and you have more glycogen. He said, but you could also achieve the same thing without depleting it. And so I suppose even in areas where there was some good evidence, there's new evidence that suggests that the supercompensation effect isn't necessary to achieve this new level. So yeah, I think that's like most things, it's a huge can of worms. I think for me to maybe give a really compelling answer to your question, but if I keeping it short, I think it's trying to understand the mechanism underlying each individual adaptation
- [76:36]
Steve
overall that makes so much sense. And it's interesting thinking about super compensation of glycogen and I'm thinking about peaking athletes and I know there's been pushback like Dr. Joe Klimsky saying his last name terribly so I'm sorry Dr. Joe, but he popularized the linear load model where it's like there's no depletion, you just slowly increase carbohydrates over time and you get to like just a full but like great looking physique without the unnecessary like swings of depletion and repletion. And obviously there's loads of coaches that do depletion and like get hopefully a super compensation effect. Or they get a really full great looking peaked physique. But it's with lots of these things it feels like there's many roads to the same sort of destination and there isn't something special necessarily about super compensation like these extremes. And I always also think about an analogy that a lot of people I've heard use before is like getting a tan and to use like the idea of the gas syndrome, sorry the gas kind of theory of adaptation so you don't get burnt to like then come out of the sun and get more brown. It's like you just kind of keep yourself from burnt. Like if you want the best tan. That is thinking that's the adaptation you're after. You just kind of, you get in the sun a little bit and then you come out and then you go in a little bit and like that I think is more like what you'd probably want to do with training versus like push yourself to the ground, have to back off and then hope that you're coming back better when you could have just been a little bit further back from that and just like navigating that adaptation at the time and the time courses that you've got at hand. So it makes sense that different biological systems would act differently, especially for those goals at hand.
- [78:18]
Sam
I think with regards to what you were saying, I think the most important thing is to understand the time course of the approach that you take. Right. If you decide to do depletion or if you decide not to understanding the time course of whichever approach you're going with. And I think that the main thing to understand here is the super compensation hypothesis would suggest that it's necessary. Right. And just because maybe following that approach works doesn't mean that that approach is necessary. Or even better, it might be better for the time course that someone is working with. Yeah, And I think that's the important distinction. So it's not saying this doesn't work, it's saying this doesn't work for the reasons that people are saying that this works.
- [79:04]
Steve
Yeah, I love that. That comes back to my question surrounding the max muscle plan and the specific phases of a strength and then metabolic phase or whatever. It might not be working because you're attacking different mechanisms towards hypertrophy, which obviously have being put into question completely. It's maybe just working because you're varying things and it's just doing hard training that is productive for growth. Similar here. It's like it's not necessarily that you're getting the super compensation, but you're getting a bit More fat loss and maybe you needed that and then you're able to compensate the glycogen in time to step on stage. So yeah, that makes so much sense. Sam, I've had you on here over an hour. I really appreciate your time. I don't know if you have any closing thoughts surrounding periodization. How do you think about it when you are say, programming for like Holly or thinking about it for a bodybuilder? Is it more about the programming and the variation within the plan to kind of manage fatigue? Is that the main thing that you'd be looking at? And then the long term planning is more specific to the person if they want to go through a specialization or what have you. But those longer term plans are less important given we're always trying to hypertrophy.
- [80:15]
Sam
Yeah, I think, I think for me the periodization component for a bodybuilder is always just the time you have to achieve your goal and then not pushing volume for too long periods of time if recovery does become an issue. So Holly's letting me write her. She's letting me write her program at least once now for 12 weeks or something. And I can say honestly that the training box I wrote wouldn't be described as using periodized programming. It was using a pretty fixed rep scheme, maybe a little progression in the sets across the mesocycle and then a progression of intensity where when I say intensity, proximity to failure increased in the first couple of weeks and then maybe plateaued. And sometimes we deload, sometimes we don't towards the end of those programs. So maybe the periodization component is the consideration between mesocycles. Do I need some lower volume before I hop into the next mesocycle? And with those I think we just have kind of an autoregulated approach, a flexible approach where we might say, okay, we need to decrease volume in this muscle group for our next. We're always writing the next program, you know, when we're completing the previous one and kind of deciding what we need to do. So using traditional periodization lingo, that's probably some sort of flexible non linear approach. But you know, I never really think about it as periodization because periodization always to me is the long term organization and structure. The day to day has always been programming to me. But then there are people, and these people aren't necessarily wrong. If you are considering recovery and you are maybe implementing, it's called flexible deloads or something like that, those are components of periodization. So maybe it exists in a gray area and I don't necessarily. I don't feel compelled to put a name to it. I think so many people do they want to call something periodized. I would just call it a sound reasonable approach to training. And if all sound reasonable intelligent approaches to training fall under periodization, that's fine. But for the listener, I don't want them to get frustrated if they're understanding a periodization is something different than what I've described. It's my own frustration. I was working on this book chapter and the addition before my chapter said that you can use a periodized approach to training or you can use a different approach like drop sets, like super sets, like rest Pause. And I was like wait a second. You can use all these techniques within a periodized programming like program. And I'm like this is so confusing. So the chapter I was know working to create revisions on, I'm like, I fundamentally have a different view of what periodization is because why would you not be able to use drop sets in a periodized program? And I realized it was treating periodization as programming and saying well you could increase volume and decrease intensity over an eight week training block or you could use drop sets. You could still do both of those things. So yeah, I encourage people don't get discouraged. The periodization literature might be some of the messiest literature out there in exercise science, both with regards to its origin and the execution of how we've attempted to study it.
- [84:09]
Steve
Yeah, I think it's in some. I can definitely see how it's frustrating because people like black and white answers, they like systems. But I very much, I often find I analogize training to nutrition where it's like hey, with nutrition really it's. You need to meet probably a certain amount of calories over the longer term. Hit some sort of macro minimums to make sure that you're in a good spot. But like how that looks. You could do like carbohydrate cycling if you wanted to. You could follow a keto diet if you really wanted to. Like to get to fat loss. Like many roads work and similar with like for hypertrophy. Like yeah, you could follow like some strength phase like metabolic, metabolic phase or what have you. You could structure in a variety of ways. But are you overloading muscles sufficiently to grow and allowing adaptation to take place if that's occurring? There's just so many great ways that you can go about that which I think is ultimately really freeing. But again unfortunately people like systems and systems sell. But I think your point is don't then handicap yourself by Feeling like you have to follow these rules. Kind of like, hey, the rep range continuum. It was once thought 8 to 12 was like the hypertrophy rep range. It's like. Actually, no, we have much wider rep range, so that can open up more things for you to utilize. But, yeah, Sam, this is. It's always a fascinating chat talking to you, and I think you provide some really useful perspectives for people. So I appreciate you. I appreciate the work you do. If people want to keep up to date, I know you said you're not too much on social media, but if they want to keep up to date with you, your work, I'm sure you'll share that at least. The paper on social media, when it's available, that sort of thing. Where should they be heading?
- [85:49]
Sam
Probably just Instagram. Amuel Buckner. Is it Buckner, Samuel, or Sam? Let me double check here.
- [85:53]
Steve
I'll make sure it's linked. It's Samuel. Buckner knows.
- [85:57]
Sam
Yeah, I got my actual name. I got an area, I guess. And yeah, well, I always post our papers. And excitingly, we finally finished our volume replication study. So I'm sitting, all the data's on the ultrasound. It'll take me about nine hours, I think, to analyze everything. So super excited about that. That was, of course, our dose response replication study where we attempted to double the sample size and add a control group. And we kind of succeeded in that. And it took much longer than I wanted it to, but it was a learning process. Doing full body training studies. And hats off to Brad, who's done a lot of those. Those aren't easy studies to do. We had so many dropouts, so many people, they start training and they. They want more or it's too much and then they drop out. And I completely get it. We also have a pretty cool paper. It was just accepted. Inspired by all my frustration to try to talk about the Godot paper with people. And they keep citing it in the. I'm sure you're familiar, Steve, with the tricep paper. And there was this particular podcast that when I critiqued the volume literature and the really large amounts of muscle growth I heard on this podcast, they said, well, that's not actually a large change. We've seen changes up to 42% in certain studies or 47% in certain studies. And I thought to myself, you can't compare an absolute change in muscle thickness of the quad to a estimated CSA of the tricep. Um, those are just different things. So we did this cool study where we just induced swelling in the triceps and we reported changes in muscle size of the triceps both in absolute terms of muscle thickness and also in terms of estimated CSA as they used in Godo. The purpose of this is to provide people the perspective to better understand what is a 47.8% change in triceps CSA using the technique used by Godo, where they multiply muscle thickness times CSA or times arm circumference to estimate csa. And basically what you'll find is it drastically inflates the numbers. So our paper, it's a short, simple study. I hope it's impactful and at least I can use it in discussions when people are trying to understand how One study gets 47% growth and other studies are getting 3 to 5% growth. Methodology is so incredibly important. And yeah, we're doing lots of work trying to make those things more clear.
- [88:43]
Steve
Well, I appreciate that. And yeah, it sounds like exciting stuff actually, on all fronts, especially the volume replication study. Might have to drag you back on when that's available to be able to be talked about because I'm sure that'll be useful and have some great insights. Again, I'll make sure I link. I definitely have the myth of periodization. I have that one. I have that linked in the description and anything else we spoke about. I'm sure I'll be able to get linked in there and I'll have your Instagram link below as well. So thank you again, Sam. Thank you guys for listening. We'll catch you in the next episode. Take care.
- [89:17]
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