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The Revive Stronger Podcast
Does Your Bone Structure Determine Your Physique Potential? - Dakota Tiede
01:02:43
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- [00:01]
A
Is it fair to say, Dakota, you are a hypertrophy nerd? I would love to hear what led you to getting your PhD in muscle physiology. Welcome to the show.
- [00:13]
B
Thanks, Steve. Thank you for having me on. It's a pleasure. Yeah, I'd definitely say the last two years especially, I would consider myself a hypertrophy nerd. So that's about how long I've been in my PhD to get to what led me to doing this. You know, I have to go, I guess way back because I started lifting weights probably when I was like 12 or 13 as a kid. You know, I grew up in like a really small rural town and the kids that I was friends with in my year, they all lived like out in the country. So the people that were actually living in town around me that I was friends with were a couple years old, older than me. So they got into lifting, you know, when they're like 14ish, which is more normal. So since I was hanging out with them, I got started then and during high school I knew I really enjoyed, you know, biology, physiology, anatomy, health, et cetera. And initially I actually went to school. My very first semester I was on the nursing track. And then I was like, you know, I, I don't think I want to be around sick people all the time. You know, it's obviously very honorable, noble job, but I, I didn't want to do that. And I knew I was really into exercise. I had been doing it for a long time. And so I decided to transfer schools and change my major to exercise science. And initially thinking I would, you know, go into PT or athletic training, something like that. And I was lucky enough that my very first year of undergrad was Dr. Monica Huebel's first year working at that school. So you probably know Dr. Huebel from the 2005 paper that was like a large multi site trial looking at the variability and resistance training response, basically showing that the response kind of follows a normal curve for hypertrophy or strength gains. And later on I eventually ended up joining her lab. So that's where I started doing undergraduate research as a senior in undergrad. And then I stayed there to do my Master's. And that's sort of when I knew I wanted to do a PhD related to muscle physiology and hypertrophy. So I actually initially reached out to Dr. Roberts, my mentor now my second year of my master's. And at the time he already had like eight PhD students, so there wasn't a spot for me. So I actually ended up for a year, I went to the University of Pittsburgh and I worked in a military research lab. And then I reached back out to Dr. Roberts and I was like, hey, I'm still looking to do a PhD. I'd really like to do it with you. And he gave me the opportunity to come on, which has been just a wonderful experience so far.
- [03:17]
A
And I'm right in saying that's Brandon Roberts.
- [03:20]
B
Michael Roberts.
- [03:22]
A
Michael. Okay, so not the Brandon I know who's been on the podcast before. Another one.
- [03:26]
B
Yeah, Roberts you probably know, like Cody Hahn was one of his PhD students and then obviously Dan as well.
- [03:36]
A
Yeah, yeah. So Dan proclaim. Yeah, Cody Horn. I've been meaning to get Cody back on the podcast actually for a while. So yeah, he went a bit quiet for a little bit, so I'd love to bring him back on. But some great people that I'm aware of. And yeah, very cool that you also took the initiative to switch. Like you just found that that wasn't for you, the kind of being around sick people. I think that's, that's fair enough. You're not going to be a very effective nurse if you're not comfortable with various things that relate to sick people or blood or anything like that. I, I would be pretty squirmish as well. And I am thankful for those individuals, but also thankful for people like you who are helping us advance our knowledge on to get more jacked. And yeah, you started really young. I always think I started pretty young at like just 15 going on 16 because I know, at least in the UK I still can't. I actually should look this up. I. It was a rule that 16 year old, you had to be 16 to lift weights and be in the free weight section, do resistance training. I don't know if it was like some myth related to growth or impacting that. I digress. But yeah, so you started very young. And uh, I similarly was just because my friends went and I joined them and then I just started liking that. So I don't. So do I. Am I right in saying it wasn't like for an aesthetic reason initially, it was just like, hey, this is fun. My friends are doing it.
- [04:55]
B
Yeah. I actually remember like the very first time like touching a weight was like we were doing one rep max bench press just to see who I had the strongest bench press. And obviously I was very weak at the time and probably not the best idea to, you know, go right into a one rep max the first time you touch any weights. But we were pretty naive and young, so. So. But yeah, it was like we actually mostly started like because I did live in a really small like rural community. Like for the longest time I literally was training in my bedroom. Like my bedroom was a bench press, like a squat stand and Olympic bar and plates and then a bed, a dresser and a tv. Which is pretty funny to think about now.
- [05:36]
A
Yeah, that immediately when you say that it makes me think of what was it, 2020 and Covid and the lockdowns and training from home and similarly I had just like a, a bed. A bed along with like a rack and a lap pull down machine and just like trying to make it in such a small space. We are very lucky to have access to full on gyms if we ever think about it. In regards to your lifting journey then now I assume you've continued lifting? Of course. Do you have, I don't know if you've competed before. Do you have aspirations to step on a bodybuilding stage or anything like that?
- [06:11]
B
Yeah, I think that is certainly something I, I would like to do in the future at some point but no concrete plans to do so yet. I've been training like more so for hypertrophy probably like the last like five or six years. Before it was just kind of like general strength, wanting to be more athletic, you know, I played sports, et cetera. So yeah, I think it's a goal of mine to do at some point but I don't know if now is the best time while I'm doing uh, the PhD and everything. Although I know people have done it, I know Jake Remmer had just done it recently and he looked great. So I think it's definitely doable but you just gotta find the right time.
- [06:50]
A
Yeah, yeah, very well said. It's, you know, enough to know that it's gotta be a priority and probably you've been through fat loss phases enough times where you know, your cognitive function just isn't quite as good, your energy levels aren't quite as good and yeah, you just, you're not your sharpest at that time. So I don't blame you at all for delaying it. And it's more time to focus on growing and enjoying that and bring in even more competitive kind of look to stage. Do you know what you want to do post PhD once you've achieved that? Do you already have ideas where you want to go?
- [07:24]
B
Yeah, I definitely want to stay in the hypertrophy realm. Where that might be is sort of, you know, I'm still trying to figure that out because you know, you can go sort of the more applied route doing you know, training studies and you know, just measuring muscle growth with different interventions, et cetera. Our lab is kind of a mix of applied and sort of molecular physiology. So we take muscle biopsies, we do cell culture, stuff like that. So that's sort of another route that I could potentially see myself going, doing more of like the molecular work, trying to figure out exactly how hypertrophy happens rather than necessarily what is the best intervention. But for now I'm definitely leading more towards like, I really like the more applied stuff, but I do enjoy mixing in sort of the molecular approaches that we do in our lab.
- [08:24]
A
Nice. Yeah, I think it's more and more people are going through kind of PhDs relating to like muscle growth, hypertrophy and things like this. And it's interesting to see the routes that they choose to go down, whether or not they stay in academia or they go into like, hey, the real world, I guess, in some sense and kind of, I don't know if they become a coach or they, they kind of get a business and they drive that and I guess become a content creator and educator in a sense or maybe a mix of both. So yeah, you've got plenty of time, I guess to kind of think about all those things and yeah, eventually step on the stage. And one of the reasons I have you here today, Dakota, was because I saw a really interest study. I think originally I saw Menno Henselman's post about it, talking about, I guess he's in academia but he didn't ever going to go through a PhD like yourself. And he does a great job of disseminating lots of different papers. And I found this one to just look really interesting. And you're the lead author on this. And in a sense it was kind of looking at do pre existing skeletal characteristics predict how much muscle someone gains from resistance training? So like something I've often heard people talk about is like the bigger foundation in terms of bone structure you have, the more muscle potential you have. And so I'm very interested to hear what led you first of all to digging into this research question.
- [09:45]
B
Yeah, so this was really like the first project that I worked on as part of my PhD, which was kind of convenient because it's based on all previously collected data. So that's one thing to be clear about up front. We didn't go out of our way to collect data to answer this question. So we might have done things a little differently had that been. But we were sitting on a lot of decks of data from previous intervention studies that we wanted to do something with. And Dr. Roberts sort of approached me and let me know about this and he's like, you know, is there anything you want to do with this? And I'm sure you're familiar with like the work of Casey Butt, looking at, you know, sort of ways that you can predict like your natural potential, so to say. And I was also, you know, somewhat familiar with that. So I thought it would be a good idea to sort of look at some of these skeletal characteristics and see if it could predict your response. So that's one thing to note. Like Casey's stuff is largely looking cross sectionally like one point in time at like natural bodybuilders. I do think he has some data on, you know, normal individuals, non competitors and his books. But to be clear, I don't have his book. So not 100% certain on that. But I do know it's not looking at over time the adaptation, which is what we did so over about a period of 10 to 12 weeks. How do these skeletal characteristics relate to your actual response rather than just one point in time? So that was sort of what inspired the work. And we're looking at a little bit different characteristics than what he has in his formulas. So I think his formulas largely rely on, you know, outside of the normal variables that go into fat free mass index, ankle and wrist circumference, whereas ours is looking more so at the shoulder width and the hip width as well as some other specific bone variables that probably are more interesting just to the researchers rather than the larger sort of training population because there is sort of that notion that, you know, people that have a larger frame are either able to over the entire training career put on more mass because there's just more room, or that maybe they're predisposed to putting on mass faster because I guess, you know, they're just sort of built in a way that would allow them to do so. Or maybe you know, they're like related characteristics where people that are sort of more that stocky build, like wide frame, big looking guys tend to put on mass quicker. That could have been the case, but our research would suggest that's not, not really the case, at least over the short term. So that was sort of what, what led us to wanting to do this project.
- [12:50]
A
Yeah, I think a lot of the listeners will be aware of Casey Butt. And speaking of Menno, again, he's got his kind of I don't want to natty max, like natty potential kind of calculator, which is very interesting. I think it uses some of Kasey's work and uses similar kind of measurements and things. So, yeah, definitely an interesting area to look a bit deeper into before analyzing the data. Did you have any, like, expectations going in?
- [13:16]
B
Yeah, so I definitely thought there would have been, you know, a more obvious relationship. And I think part of that was just, again, it was the first project I worked on, so I was a little bit more naive perhaps, at the time in terms of, you know, our ability to predict hypertrophy based on anything. Now that I'm more in tune with the literature, I know that that is not. We don't really have great predictive power, regardless of the variables that we're looking at. And also, you know, from my own anecdotal observations, like, I would have thought from my time in the weight room and the gyms that that would have, you know, held true to some extent. Just because you tend to think that those guys with the big frames, they look big, you would assume that they put on muscle faster or something like that, but it didn't. Didn't really seem to be. To be the case when we actually looked at it empirically. So. And, you know, you also think about, like, I used to when I told you I worked at Pitt doing military research, but we also did some research with the sports teams there. So they're a Division 1 school, which is, like, sort of the highest, like, level of, like, college athletics in the US and we would do a lot of tests on their football team. And those are some really big dudes that they. Literally, some of them don't even fit on the dexa. And, you know, they. The linemen, which are the guys that are the biggest dudes, like 300 pounds, they all have, obviously really large legs, but they also have really wide hips. But I think it's probably more so the fact that if you have those sort of large frame characteristics, wider hips, wider shoulders, et cetera, you're probably just more likely to have more muscle at baseline rather than, you know, being able to put on more, at least in the short term, or being able to put on muscle faster, which is also sort of what played out in this study here, where we saw there was some, you know, moderate to stronger correlations or relationships between the baseline metrics and baseline lean mass. But then when you look at the adaptation over time, uh, they were very weak. And then when you also account for sex, it basically goes away. So
- [15:44]
A
very interesting. Yeah, I think on hearing this study, and while I was interested in it, I would have assumed similar where to kind of simplify it or just the bigger frame person would see faster adaptations, faster muscle growth than the smaller frame person. But I think as you, to kind of summarize, what you were essentially saying was the bigger framed individuals, they start out bigger but grow at a similar pace to the small, smaller frame people, which is at least over this short term study. Like you said, it's important to mention that which is very interesting. Do you think, do you have any suspicion to. If skeletal structure isn't explaining much of the variance in hypertrophy, what could be? Because I think there was quite a lot of variance within the study, wasn't there?
- [16:31]
B
Yeah, so there's, there's a whole line of research trying to explain why some people tend to grow a lot faster or a lot more compared to others. And a lot of the research looks at biological variables. Now, I will note one point with this whole area of research is up until recently, there's probably some methodological factors that we haven't been accounting for. So like a lot of this research is like, you may have seen studies where they sort of bend people into like low, moderate, high responders or like non responder, extreme responder. And probably the way that we actually want to go about identifying those people as either low, moderate, high responders is we want to do sort of repeated periods of training. So similar to what Zach Robinson did for his dissertation study where he had people come in, train, detrain, and then train them again. So if you sort of go about it that way by having them train, detrain, train, and you can do that, you know, just once, having them retrain or do that over multiple times, you sort of account for some of the unexplained variants and you account for some statistical issues with just doing that based on a single training period, such as regression to the mean. So moving forward, that's like one methodological consideration that should probably be made when these type of studies are ran. And they actually just had recently, I think it was in the fall, they had a big conference discussing this that Dr. Roberts went to and I think Zach was there, Dr. James Steele, et cetera, a big group of people that you would probably know. And that was one of the things that got pointed out at that conference was that methodological consideration. But we can sort of, if you'd like to, we can discuss some of the biological variables that might be related to that, keeping that in mind. So one of the things that I guess sticks out to me and our lab has done research on this is ribosome biogenesis. So to give a Quick overview of how sort of hypertrophy happens, just briefly, because that will help this make a lot more sense. Right when we lift weights. Obviously, mechanical tension is the primary stimulus that results in the muscle growth. And that tension gets sensed by mechanoreceptors, which that's a whole another area of research in itself, like trying to figure out what the mechanoreceptors are and what they do exactly. But basically they take the mechanical signal and convert it to a biochemical signal. And basically you'll have a phosphorylation cascade that sort of makes its way to MTOR Complex 1, which we sort of called the master regulator of muscle growth. And that's because it sort of takes in all these anabolic facilitatory signals and inhibitory signals from other molecules like ampk, and then it decides whether that signal gets propagated, so to speak. If that signal gets propagated, then eventually what you'll have is translation initiation factors binding to gene promoter regions on DNA. And that causes what we call translation. So the DNA is like a code and it gets translated into like a message. It's literally called messenger rna. This makes its way out into the sarcoplasm, where ribosomes are. Ribosomes basically take that MRNA and then assemble a complete protein based on that mRNA. So that process is called translation. So this whole process is known as the central dogma of molecular biology, where you have DNA, that's the code, then you have that being transcribed into messenger rna, which makes its way to the ribosome, which then gets translated into a function functional protein. So you can imagine ribosome biogenesis is basically the process of making more of these ribosomes. So if you have more ribosomes, you should then be able to make more functional proteins out of the MRNA that are sort of around in the cytoplasm. And there's actual techniques that we can use using mass spec, to look at sort of the majority of the MRNA's in the muscle or the majority of the proteins in the muscle. So that's transcriptomics and proteomics, and oftentimes they don't actually align. So that also sort of points to, you know, having like a lack of ribosomes maybe preventing us from making more functional proteins out of the MRNA's. And there's been some actual research into this regarding like response or high response versus low response, some of which has been done by our lab before I was here, so before my time. But basically there's a couple of studies that would point to the high responders having a greater increase in ribosomes. So one of those from our lab being Mobley et al. 2018, basically they clustered people based on their change in vastus lateralis muscle thickness into low, moderate and high responders. And what they saw is that the moderate and high responders, they had an increase in total RNA levels, which is a surrogate marker for ribosome biogenesis, whereas the individuals in the low response cluster did not really have a much of an increase in total rna. And one caveat to that study, I will say, is that basically when they performed the initial analysis to look to see if there was interaction effects between the different clusters, that was not significant, but because they saw a really large increase, specifically in the high group. So for reference, the low group, they increased the total RNA by about 8%, whereas the high group, they increased it by 32%. Because they saw that they decided to do a force post hoc, which if you adhere to typical statistical practices in terms of like null hypothesis testing, you should not do that. But they did it anyways. And there was basically then they saw in the, the post hoc test that there was those significant differences between the moderate and high and then the low group, whereas the moderate and high group had a greater increase. And they also saw interestingly that there was a correlation, however it was weak. So that's instead of looking at the clusters, looking at everyone. And another point there with that study, they saw that there was a correlation between baseline muscle thickness and change in muscle thickness. So kind of a, another thing, just a side note across like the whole literature, sometimes you see that there is relationships between like the baseline size metric or baseline lean mass, and then the change in size or the change in lean mass, which basically our study, if you don't actually account for sex, it, it does suggest that as well. But once you account for sex, that's no longer like basically a significant finding. So like that kind of points to also that across the list for some people it may be the case, or there may be, I guess, a signal that people that are already bigger might grow better. But you know, obviously our results would say that's probably not the case. And I think I put a little bit more stock in ours just because of the large sample size, et cetera. But back on the ribosome biogenesis note, there's been a couple other studies that have found similar findings, some from Marcus Bauman's group where they did cluster analysis and found similarly that like the clusters with the greater response, they had a greater increase in total rna. And there's been some studies just also looking at the correlation finding that there was significant correlation between like the change in quad cross sectional area for example and total rna, the change in total rna. But one specific study that I think is really cool to talk about is Hammerstrom et al. 2020. So this was a within subject design where one leg trained with a single set per exercise. So I think they were doing leg press and leg extension. So then it would have been, you know, two total sets per session versus the other leg was the multi set leg. It did three sets per exercise. So two versus six sets per session. And they saw that obviously, as you would probably expect, the multi set leg grew more, but also that leg had a greater increase in the total rna, which is again a surrogate for ribosome biogenesis. So I do think there's a signal there for ribosome biogenesis. Then again, there's certainly null findings out there as well, but it makes biological sense. Another thing would be satellite cells. But I guess before we move on to that, do you have any questions about the whole ribosome biogenesis bit or any thoughts?
- [27:22]
A
No, it's very interesting and my head goes to is there anything we can do to influence it or is it just one of those things that are sort of, hey, it's part of that deck of cards that you're born with. And it's then a case of playing with other variables to try and maximize your growth rather than focusing too much on the, the ribosomes, which I'm assuming we maybe don't have much control over outside of, I don't know, PEDs influence that side of things.
- [27:51]
B
Yeah, that's a good question. I actually, I don't know that. And we're kind of obviously like, at least in the US kind of hamstrung on like what kind type of, you know, PED research we can do. So I'm not sure if anyone has looked into how that changes with PED use, but it, it's definitely an interesting idea. And you're right that like, unfortunately for a lot of these biological characteristics, at least for the time being, there doesn't seem to be a great way to intervene on it. But regardless, I think I would want stronger data before we even tried to, you know, just because I think with this whole area of research with just all the caveats to it, I wouldn't put too much stock in any one variable, which makes a lot of sense because we know that the degree of response in terms of muscle growth is going to be dependent on a lot of factors. And that's not just your training variables, but also all these other biological variables that can influence the response. So trying to look at sort of one factor and pinpoint one factor is probably not going to be fruitful regardless. Now in these studies obviously they tend to test for multiple, like they'll look at satellite cells, they'll look at the total RNA and other sort of baseline characteristics and that's why you also get a lot of null findings. But I do think they're is at least a signal for the ribosome biogenesis and I would also say baseline satellite cells. But just overall we should be cautious.
- [29:43]
A
That makes sense.
- [29:44]
B
Yeah.
- [29:44]
A
It's interesting to me because I know I've heard of some kind of training protocols where they're trying to influence like my nuclear domain or they're trying to specifically train fast rich muscle fibers in hope that hey, they have more hypertrophic pot, maybe I can grow a bit more. But it sounds like, like you said, kind of the more you learn about these things and about hypertrophy as much as we have wishful thinking that we might be able to influence something somehow through some clever mechanism, the body is relative. Just so clever that it seems like actually the kind of basic training approaches in terms of training hard, I mean almost full stop seems to be the thing that you have most control over. And the rest of it is like there's different roads to kind of getting there. But ultimately it's not like there's some fancy protocol you can follow to try and influence stuff like this. And the final thing I just wanted to say was it's interesting hearing about because I do think some people will almost be self defeatist in terms of their bone structure being like, oh, I have bad genetics because I have like small wrists, small ankles, small hips, so on and so forth. And that's one of the things you actually can see. Like you can't see a lot of these things because they're like internal to you. So it's quite nice that at least the one you can see, at least given your research, isn't very predictive of hypertrophy in the short term. So that's at least actually quite nice. 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.
- [31:25]
B
Yeah, that's one thing I was gonna touch on too, which you nailed it. There is like, obviously we do a lot of research on these biological variables because we're curious, right? We're doing research for a reason where people that tend to be more curious and question how things work. But from a practical standpoint, like you can't just go get a muscle biopsy and figure out, you know, how many satellite cells you have. I mean, I guess I could, but like most people probably don't have access to that. And so looking for something that is easily measured makes a lot more sense. But probably to a lot of people's relief, it doesn't really seem to matter. And another thing I was like thinking about, like, do we even want to be able to predict it like based on these anthropometric characteristics? Is that even a good thing if we are able to, to do that? Because think about how many people would, you know, enter their information into a formula and it would tell them like, you know, you can only get to X pounds or kilos of lean mass, like this is like the most you can hope for and they would then be disappointed with that maybe and not even ever start training or they wouldn't put in the same effort. So I think from a practical standpoint, you basically want to treat these sort of questions as if they don't really matter because you just want to go out. If you care about bodybuilding, you care about putting on lean mass, you should just in your head sort of have this idea that you're going to be able to grow to infinity and do what you can to try to reach that. And obviously you're going to fall short. But I think it's better to have that mindset if you really care about, you know, being the best natural bodybuilder you can or just putting on as much lean mass as you can.
- [33:25]
A
I completely agree. The longer I do this, the more of that mindset I employ. And it's funny, obviously there's something to placebo nocebos in many ways with this sort of thing, but I don't think there's something special to that mindset apart from the fact that if you have it, you're probably going to apply yourself to all the things that lead to better results and then you're going to get better results. And it's like a self fulfilling prophecy in that sense. And it's a positive feedback loop. Equally you can get that negative feedback loop if you're pessimistic about muscle growth, you think you've reached your natty max or Your bad genetics, you're not going to put in your best efforts probably, and that's going to not lead to the best results either. And something we've sort of hinted at here, Dakota, which I think is interesting, is obviously like you said, your research was looking up to 12 weeks. Over that period, frame size didn't seem to really influence muscle growth at all. But does the frame size, do we have any research that can confirm some of like Katie Buck's calculations or Menno's where it's a case of long term hypertrophy potential? Can we predict that based off the structural characteristics at all?
- [34:34]
B
Yeah, not off the top of my head. Obviously a lot of the research is sort of more so these short term studies. We don't have the data on long term adaptation after years and years of training. So the best that we have is going to be the cross sectional analysis of people that have sort of gotten to that top level. So that would be like what Kasey Butt has put out there. But I think it's just important to keep in mind like we can, we can use sort of those formulas based on these natural bodybuilders to sort of get an idea of what is possible. And as we just discussed, do you want to sort of shoot for the moon, like just treat it as if you can reach those. But you know, not everyone is going to be able to. Even if their sort of, you know, ankle and wrist circumference characteristics would suggest that, okay, their natty max would be this based on the natural bodybuilders. That doesn't mean you as an individual will reach there that point because again, there's probably some sort of predisposition towards these, you know, natural bodybuilders for them to like go compete because they are probably the people that look better sort of generally. I mean, obviously they put in a lot of hard work but you know, I don't know what someone's sort of chops to then go compete if they do put in that work and they still don't have much of a response would be. So from a realistic, realistic standpoint you may not even be able to get to those levels that like one of those formulas or calculators may spit out. But in your head you want to treat it as if you can and maybe even treat it as if you could exceed that and just do everything in your power to sort of reach that goal. If you are one of these people that want to maximize muscle growth, which is obviously not everyone. So yeah, for sure.
- [36:41]
A
I think it's Funny, it reminds me of like the fat free mass index and people treating 25 as like, as if everyone should also be able to get there. And also anyone above that is clearly non natural. And it's like, oh, there's lots of issues with having that sort of mindset towards it because like you said, similar to this, the data is based off a certain subset of a population that is already like there's some bias involved within that and kind of just like natural selection in a sense, because of how people respond to things and the thought that comes to mind. I remember way back one of the early episodes of this podcast. I did one with Greg Nichols and Mike Israel on genetics. And I remember specifically them talking about, you have people who are like fast responders but then almost seem to reach a limit quite soon and then kind of plateau out. And then you have some other individuals who just seem to be slow burners. And I don't know how much data there is to support that sort of thing. I've certainly seen it in like real life and I can't say it's necessarily. I certainly don't know if it's genetics or if it's like, hey, the person who was just a slow burner just took a while to pick things up, or maybe they never took it all that seriously at the start and then they started taking it more seriously. So it's just like they saw this slow progress versus this other person who they just knew they had a good coach, they applied themselves a lot and then kind of hit this limit. And then, I don't know, life took over and they weren't able to apply themselves so much. I don't know if you have any thoughts surrounding that subject. If for that I kind of come at it for that individual, similar to the mindset you've already mentioned who is getting into the gym and they're. I just don't seem to have responded as well as my friends or other people. Maybe I'll just give up. I kind of have hope for that individual that maybe they're just a bit of a slow burn and if they just keep applying, they might actually get to where their friends were and exceed them potentially. I don't know.
- [38:33]
B
Yeah. On the, on the topics of genetics, I think it's like pretty. It at least seems clear to anyone who's been lifting weights for a while that genetics have an influence, but we're actually still not very good at even like identifying like specific, like for example, like single nucleotide polymorphisms that would like make you a better or worse responder. And that's just where like one letter in the DNA code is switched. And there's like some research into that which I don't think has been, they've been able to like identify certain S and PS but I think we're still really, really far off from then, still being able to say like, well, this person is going to be a responder or a non responder based on, you know, their DNA. Even so, from a research perspective, I don't think we're, we're there yet. And again, I think it goes back to there just being so many inputs that influence hypertrophy from training to biological variables. But on the topic of like someone who is sort of not drawing as fast as they, as they would like, I guess I'm sort of just in general more of a optimist that there's always a, another stone that you can turn over if you're willing to put in the effort. So, you know, maybe you can do more volume, maybe you can sleep better, hone in on your diet a little bit more. That's sort of my perspective on it. But I think I probably do tend to just be a bit, a bit more optimistic about those sort of things. And I guess, Steve, I actually want to turn it around and ask a question to you. Do you think in your sort of experience coaching and in regards to the frame question, do you think that that would be like, just from your observations would. I guess you kind of, you kind of talked about that a bit earlier, right, where that, that would have been something you would have expected to be a significant influence. I'm curious just from like a coach who's coached, you know, a ton of people, like, what are your thoughts?
- [40:56]
A
Yeah, it's fascinating to me because I, as someone who actually has a bit of a larger frame in regards to wrists, ankles, hips, I wouldn't say my shoulders are the widest, but ever those areas are. So I've always referred to myself as a little bit of a spongebob of shape versus a patch. An upside down Patrick is kind of what you want to be, that kind of nice V taper. And so I've, I always looked at people who had smaller wrists, smaller ankles, and I look at how like muscle sits on their frame. I'm like, man, you, it just sits on your frame so much better. And so I kind of come at it from like a bodybuilding perspective. Like, how does that. Because there's a lot of, there's more to bodybuilding than just muscle mass like how you perform on stage is very much related to like muscle shape, size, how it sits on you. So I've always looked at it. Hey, I have a big frame and I might have more muscle than this other guy, but he just has that tiny waist and rounded out shoulders and all of this. So it's a tough one for sure. And then trying to track kind of muscle growth over time. Again, when someone has a slighter frame, any bit of added muscle kind of looks more impressive to me. So it looks like they're potentially gaining more as well. So to say, I actually don't know and I don't have a strong feeling towards. Hey, I've definitely seen my clients who have smaller bone structures, they don't gain as much muscle mass over if I've worked with them for years, versus those with larger frames. And ultimately, if you are a competitive bodybuilder, I'm not sure you should be so focused on that anyway. And yeah, you just try and like sculpt your body to be your kind of piece of art and where you need more or less and play to your strengths and like you said, essentially put in your best efforts, look at what you're currently not doing, see if there's anything more you could do. The other thing I found interesting, you've probably seen some of that research that's looked at kind of non responders or the hard gainers. And I've certainly seen it might have been James Krieger that spoke about this a little bit where it seemed like those individuals seem to respond once you give them enough volume. Quite often it seems like they just need more. And so that would make sense to me if these average training volumes work, if you're fairly average in response. But if you are this like outside the bell curve individual, you might have to do something a little different. But it doesn't mean you can't get there. It just means the, the route or the road to Rome as it were, is a little bit of a different one. So you might need to experiment a little bit more.
- [43:26]
B
Yeah, I think that's spot on. And I think, you know, you bring up a really great point about how bodybuilding is not just a matter of how much lean mass you have. Right. There's so much more that goes into how you look. So don't be sort of pessimistic just because you don't have wide shoulders. Well, I guess that is one thing that it does matter for bodybuilding. You do kind of want the V taper, but you know, keep in Mind, there's probably other factors. Well, there definitely is other factors that go into how you look on stage, how you look just sort of walking around rather than specifically how much muscle mass you have. Right. Your shape goes into it. Muscle insertions. You know, what are your sort of stronger muscle groups? Like, do you just have like insane traps or delts or biceps compared to your other other muscles? Whereas, you know, probably a lot of men would prefer. Prefer it be something like that, like the upper body muscles. Whereas unless you are like a natural bodybuilder or I guess unnatural, you probably don't necessarily care so much about like your legs being super big as like a sort of standout muscle group, but, you know, make do with what you have. And I think everyone can sort of get to a place where they can at least be proud of what they, what they have. And they shouldn't compare themselves to, you know, the next person, their gym buddy, the guy that I see on Instagram. Like, I think it should be a personal journey. What can you do with the cars that you're dealt?
- [45:06]
A
Yeah, yeah, I couldn't say it better than that.
- [45:10]
B
Actually. It's.
- [45:11]
A
And I think that's the right mindset to have. Is that optimistic mindset with this research or line of research, do you have any things that you want to dive into further from this paper or.
- [45:23]
B
Yeah.
- [45:23]
A
Has it led you to any other research questions you want to dive into?
- [45:29]
B
Yeah, I mean, if you want, we can, we can talk about like some of those other biological predictors a little bit, but in terms of like, I'm not sure. Are you asking, I guess, like for our conversation or like for future research? Either.
- [45:46]
A
Either is great.
- [45:48]
B
Yeah. So this, I guess for me, like, my, my sort of research path has sort of went away from like being able to predict. Like, I didn't set out again to be able to do this. This was a retrospective analysis of data we already had. So it wasn't like something I went up to doc and was like, I really want to do this. Moving forward, it was awesome to be able to, you know, write this up. But moving forward, I think for my personal research path, at least in the next few years, it'll be more looking at resistance training interventions and different types of interventions rather than necessarily trying to predict, you know, who responds or who doesn't. But as far as like, some of the other biological factors. So we mentioned like satellite cells, some research again from our lab and also from Dr. Bahman's lab that would suggest that individuals that either have like a greater amount of satellite cells at baseline or have a greater increase in satellite cells through the training period, that then sort of results in a greater myonuclear number at that post training. Right. Cause the satellite cells fuse to the fibers and become myonuclei. That's also. There's also a signal for that being sort of like a biological predictor. So one of the studies from our group, which I won't, I won't go into all the details because I feel like that might get boring for listeners. And I already kind of did that for the ribosome stuff. But that's just because that's more of like a specific niche interest that I like. But if people want to look more into it, our group has a study, Smith et al. 2023. And then Dr. Bauman's group has Petrala at all 2008, which would sort of point to satellite cells being important as well. Other things that people have looked at, which you actually touched on before, which is the fiber type, you know, do people with type 2 fibers have a greater or a greater percent of FI? Type 2 fibers have a greater response. And I think that's pretty variable as well. There's a couple studies that would point to that potentially being the case, but I think there's just a lot more null findings. So if people want to look into that, Hahn et al. 2019 R group again, and then Hocking and et al. 1998, both would sort of point in that direction. But I think there's a lot of, a lot of null research on top of that. Some kind of interesting stuff moving forward in that area is people have started to, instead of using muscle biopsies to look at fiber types, you can use magnetic resonance spectroscopy, which uses like the same machine as a MRI to look at muscle carnosine content. So type 2 fibers have more muscle carnitine. So you can sort of get an idea of like, if someone is more like type 2 dominant using that technique. So I'm trying to remember the name of the guy. Dr. Dr. Derayv, his group has been doing this, um, and they also recently did a study in 2023 looking at if people with, you know, higher muscle carine content. So those would, you would assume would be the people that skew towards like the Fast Twitch type 2 if they respond better. And basically they, they didn't. They're. It was similar between people with that high muscle carine content and people with lower. So I think that's an area of the research where we can't really draw Any conclusions either. So in the future, I think obviously this is still a hot topic. I know there's ongoing research related to sort of trying to figure out, you know, what determines if someone is a high or low responder as well as sort of what can we do to get like low responders to be able to then respond. So I think moving forward we'll have a much better idea probably like a decade from now. But obviously research moves slow, but I am kind of hopeful that something will come up, but it probably will not be like an anthropometric characteristic where people will be able to just sort of easily assess it. It'll probably be something more biological related. So I guess you can take that as good or bad if you want to be able to predict your hypertrophy or if you just want to live in naivety and just train and be happy, you know.
- [50:42]
A
Yeah, I think that. Train and be happy. I think that's a good take home from the entire podcast, actually. The entire podcast, not just this episode.
- [50:50]
B
Train and be happy.
- [50:52]
A
I like that. And I think kind of the messaging here is, hey, go about your training, enjoy it, put in your best efforts. If you have an open mindset to great results and you enjoy and have fun, you're going to adhere long term and just continue to do that and invest as much or as little as kind of what inspires you and what takes you there. Because right now we don't have any good reason if you have a smaller bone structure to think you're going to grow less or have less muscle growth potential than someone else. So I think it's nice for a lot of the listeners, listeners and in some ways I'm glad that there is nothing to indicate because I think it could put people off which like you said, even if you're not on competitor, it's just about a journey for yourself of enjoyment, health and well being. And you can certainly and everyone can take their body from like not trained to something much more impressive than that. It just is going to differ person to person for a whole myriad of reasons outside of like even biology. Like you said, I'm interested. I don't think we've got time to dive into some of your other interests, Dakota, that we talked about off air. Maybe we can do that in a future podcast. But I think it's really interesting to talk to someone like yourself who clearly is really interested in the kind of scientific literature and keeps up to date with that, but also is kind of training themselves, trying to maybe maximize or certainly grow a lot of muscle. You said you might compete in the future. What does your training look like for yourself, bearing in mind I guess you're running your PhD alongside and so you haven't got all the time in the world.
- [52:23]
B
Yeah, yeah. So like recently I've definitely had to lower the volume a bit just to make more time. So you know, I've never really been, I've never considered myself a high volume or a low volume guy. I guess I would consider myself a moderate volume guy which doesn't make people, you know, comment and stuff on social media. It's not the best for sort of having a out there opinion that engages a lot of people. But I think it's probably the right place to be somewhere in the middle. Right. And for me personally it's like right now, five days of the week, I lift Monday through Friday and that is like out of convenience because I, I live with my significant other, which has been a journey because she was not really lifting weights before we started dating. And now she's usually there five days a week with me in the mornings, which is awesome. But yeah, five days a week basically run like a modified upper lower split where I kind of split the first upper day into like a more torso dominant day, so like chest and back and then a more like limb dominant day. So like shoulders and arms. I think my fractional volume is probably anywhere from as low as like 6 up to maybe like 12 sets. So still pretty much like I guess on the upper end of low volume. But again that's mostly for time's sake and I, I would if I was not training in the gym I currently train and I would probably be able to bump that up using like my preferred like time saving technique is agonist antagonist supersets. But right now the gym we train in is just too busy. I don't want to be that guy. So I'm happy to like take sort of, you know, marginally less gains right now in favor of having, having more time and also knowing that in the future I'll hopefully have more time to be able to dedicate to training and you know, doing some specialization phases where I push higher volumes, etc.
- [54:41]
A
Yeah, very cool. Yeah, so when I hear that set volume, I think I've been talking to Eric Helms too often. So my kind of idea of moderate volume is like 15 to 20 sets now because Eric's all the way up there. Obviously I can't talk. I push the high volumes as well. But I can thankfully do the antagonistic
- [55:01]
B
agonistic supersets yeah, certainly before I was more like up there, like in the, in the 15 plus range for before starting my PhD. But you know, I would be in the gym like, you know, probably close to like two hours. And that was partially because obviously I was doing a lot of straight sets. I wasn't using, you know, myo reps, drop sets, I wasn't doing the agonist antagonist supersets. Whereas now, like, if I were to try to push higher volumes, I'd probably use all of the above to make it more time efficient. And also it is the fact that I train with my, my significant other. I don't know how she would feel about, you know, me making her. I guess she doesn't necessarily have to do the exact same thing I do, but you know, sitting there while I'm doing, you know, like a MYOREP set or drop set, having her, you know, load the weights off or something like that. So. So right now I'm just pretty happy where I'm at, trading how I am and knowing that I still have a lot of time. I'm 27, so I have a lot of time still to put on more muscle and try to push things. Like you and Eric are. Yeah.
- [56:14]
A
Hell yeah. I was just thinking I've got the perfect solution for your superset is one of you does say the row machine and then the other one's doing the machine press and then you just swap. You just swap, go back and forth. But then you don't train together so much.
- [56:28]
B
Yeah, that's true. I also just feel like when it's like really busy, I just feel bad like taking up two pieces of equipment too. So it's like not even just like a, oh, I can't get the equipment. It's like I feel bad about taking the equipment. So. Yeah.
- [56:42]
A
Have you experimented much with. I just actually saw there was a new paper, I think Dan Daniel Plotkin was the lead author on the hamstrings and it was looking at kind of partial ranges of motion. I believe you are on that paper as well. Not obviously not going to dive into that now right at the end of the podcast, but I am interested where your head is with or at least in your own training. Do you apply any of that literature that's looked at maybe length and partial training or just like, hey, training at long muscle lengths? Where, where are you with that? And practically do you apply it at all?
- [57:14]
B
Yeah, certainly I do apply it to some extent. You know, a lot of my training is based around still preferences. So like even though, for example like in dance paper that we just preprinted, like one of the. Well, really the only like significant finding was that the semi tendinosis grew more with the lengthened partial compared to full rom. And this is in trained lifters too. So, you know, probably your ability to pick up a contrast whenever you're looking at trained lifters compared to untrained is probably a bit blunted. But I'm not going to be doing the lengthened partial leg curl because I'm just going to be honest, that hurts my knees so much. Like I get a pain in the back of my knee whenever I do that. So. But my overall sort of view on like the lengthen literature is that for most cases you may get a small, very small like beneficial effect, but it's probably null. So somewhere between, you know, there's no harm in doing it to a, you might get a small beneficial effect and it may be muscle dependent as well. Like there's some movements where we seem to have like more consistent findings. So for example, like the calves, like training them in the bottom range. That's something every single time I do a calf raise, it's a standing calf raise. Length and partial. Yeah. In my, in my personal training, I also really like the length and partial leg extension. And if I can sort of lean back, I'll often do that as well. And that is sometimes I'll, I'll like actually alternate. Like if I do lengthen or leg extensions two days a week, then I might do one sort of like really lean back, one a bit more like upright because I do feel a bit more stable when I can like sit more upright, have my back fully in contact with the pad and like grab onto the handles tight. But as far as me actually applying it, those are the two areas I use it the most, like leg extension and then the calf raise. But Dan, I mean, he has probably, I think a better grip on the length and partial, you know, long muscle length literature than like anyone that I've ever spoken to. So you got, you got to get him back on man to talk about it because he, he will talk about it for days and days and days. And he's obviously very smart. So he's sort of been like a, a second mentor to me. So I really appreciate Dan. And yeah, there's an awesome study that he put together. I was glad to be able to work with him on it.
- [60:11]
A
Very cool. Yeah, I think you're kind of. That's the way I tended to think about the literature. There was. There doesn't seem to be any obvious downsides. Obviously, if it's causing pain or discomfort, that's always something to modify and avoid. And there seems to be some small upside. And as someone who's been training like two decades, I'm all about any small upsides I can get.
- [60:32]
B
Yeah.
- [60:32]
A
So I will, I will apply it in some areas where I think it makes good sense. But similar to you, if something feels good to do full rom, like even if it's.
- [60:41]
B
Maybe it could be better doing it
- [60:42]
A
as a length and partial might mix it in here and there because again, it's small differences here. So kind of siding with preferences and fun, like you said within your training. I think that that can't be. It can't be underemphasized. I think it's. It is under emphasized, I think too often. So, yeah, I think that was great. And Dakota, thank you so much for your time. I'll have to bring Dan on as well. Great. You gave him plenty of shout out. But if people want to keep up to date with you, your research, I know you post on social media. I've seen a few of your infographics which look really informative. So where should people head?
- [61:16]
B
But yeah, the best place is Instagram for sure. So my handle, I think is Dakota. Td. That's the other thing. I. I gotta pick a bone with Eric Trexler. Cause he, he butchered my name in their podcast. Obviously he made me sound very, very Spanish. I think he said like TNA or something. But it's td. But yeah, people wanna find me, just go look me up on Instagram. That's usually where I post the most and engage with people the most.
- [61:45]
A
Fantastic. Yeah, I'll make sure that's linked in the description along with this research paper that we were talking about. Thank you guys so much for listening. Thank you again to Dakota and we'll talk to you soon.
- [61:55]
B
Take care. Yep. Thank you, Steve.