Lyle McDonald on Evidence-Based Training, Natty Limits, and Fitness Myths

today I have the distinct pleasure of being joined by one of the brightest Minds in the fitness industry Lyle

McDonald hi Lyle howy how you doing I'm great I'm all the better for uh finally getting to talk to you um so L you've

got a formal training in exercise physiology yes you've been writing popular and influential books since the

late 90s including the rapid fat loss handbook a guide to flexible dieting ketogenic diet and the women's book

volume one your website bodyrecomposition tocom is a treasury of knowledge and uh For Better or For Worse

uh you ly were the first person as I understand to introduce an evidence-based approach to bodybuilding

training and nutrition to the internet which is a field that has since proliferated and imploded we could say

and no doubt that's a topic we we'll get to um additionally um you're a successful powerlifting coach uh with

with your trainee Sumi um whom I'll be interviewing with Lyle in a later video um setting several National and State

records in the ipf and deadlifting a remarkable we actually don't compete in IPS usapl no USPA ah

RPS which is the um I've forgotten what it is um and also Debbie RPF which is another Federation USPA is associated

with IPL like it's kind of like they're usapl ipf were sort of the first and I mean in in America there are something

like 40 different federations orps is Revolution powering Syndicate so USPA and IPL which uh are are part of the

same thing and usapl and IPL it's a very silly sport in that regard cards many federations um yeah I mean it's it's

absurd it's like uh boxing is the only other sport I can think of it's like that that at any given point there are

half a dozen world champions yeah and in powerlifting it's really the same way um so yeah but she is like we've competed

in those three federations thank you for the correction yeah and RPS and she's competed in and

set records at the State national and actually at the World level in two different weight classes in the 50s guys

in both the uh 48 and 52 kilos weight classes uh two different Master's age groups the open she actually competed

very successfully in the open class against liers of all ages and so yeah three federations two weight

classes uh two different Masters divisions and the open and if you go to open powerlifting do org or Com or

whatever like and look up her number she's ranked you know top 10 in you know for female totals something right up

there on like overall deadlift like not even in Master's division she's pulled her final meet she pulled a three and a

half body weight deadlift for just short of it so yeah she was given her biomechanics and where she

came from she was uh got a lot farther than anybody expected I a couple other people I've

got another Master's female lifter I've taken actually sumi's daughter to meets and she did really well and i' I've

coached people of and on over the years it's a and you're remarkably good at it but you don't offer your coaching

services at the moment you're you're currently offering well not too not too yes large number I do I do like single

consultations I don't generally take on regular coaching that was something you know going back to the whole internet

thing so just for people listening like I was there first I no I was there when it started I got on the internet in 1993

back when it was just nobody knew what this thing was and my first access to the internet was the four four free

hours AOL disc back in 93 and I had like an old school modem and then the internet started

so somewhere in the mid 19 early 2000s was when online coaching really started to to become a

thing because I knew a couple of the the early online coaches names nobody nobody would remember at this point

I never really got into it like I don't generally like nutrition is one thing like that's but it's I'll be honest I

don't find it it's pretty easy like I don't need to handh hold people and tell them not to eat tomatoes like I don't I

don't like contest prep dieting I I just find I mean it's interesting from a physiological standpoint but from the

day-to-day stuff it's I would I just someone up on a diet tell them not adjust it like just just go you don't

suei does that sui does weekly check-ins with people and inherence and I'm not saying that's unimportant saying I don't

do it yeah and as far as the the online coaching I always found it very difficult because I am uh quite the

technical perfectionist and I find it very difficult to teach technique

online because like okay you can send videos especially complicated things like yeah can teach you how to do a

bicep curl probably can I teach you how to deadlift probably not and I I've worked with people who have trained for

years and so they and then I I see them lift in person and I'm like okay you but do it your Technique is trash we're

gonna start over from the beginning it's very difficult to do online so I just kind of didn't never got into that and

just didn't and again you know I don't I realize everyone on the internet trains harder than any 10 trainees I've heard

that for 30 years I know what I see with my own eyes so I tend to be a very Hands-On coach I mean I've been in the

gym six days a week with sui for the last six plus years because whether I'm adjusting technique or making feedback

I'm adjusting the workout dayto day today based on what I'm seeing based on what I'm observing within my my and

we'll talk more about that next week when she's G but it I can't do that really um online I mean like I said

people can send me videos at the end of the week great what is that that doesn't really help me during their workout to

make adjustments so I never really got into that so now I do do consultations where I just try to basically set up

people on a program um that's right for them and it's interesting like I don't want to spend too much time dumping on

the rest of this industry although I could spend as much time as you wanted because I've seen it all and I've been

involved in it all um I'm very part of my whole thing I think my whole career this is part of the reason

I'm not more successful than I am is I have this crazy idea that context matters and that giving people cookie

cutter workouts and nutrition doesn't get you very far like one of the earlier online coaches who I knew every month he

would send out to 100 150 people same boilerplate workout in the same nutrition

program period but all he needed was like one or two to make it to contest like for

bikini or physique or whatever and win and he could CL that he was successful he was making I mean he was driving

sports cars by set people and i' I've talked to people that have worked with some of the other online coaching

programs and what they tell me and what they show me is really disappointing because that they're getting cookie

cutter stuff or they're just getting just generally bad stuff and so one of the things that I've always been really

important it's like I need to know who the person is what their goals are what their background is in terms of like all

right what diet have worked and have not worked and then we're going to talk a little bit about fat loss and the fat

loss and things like that like look if I'm train you know if I'm working with someone like Su who's an

elite athlete who's trying to reach the the pinnac that's one conversation if I'm trying to diet someone down to 5%

without muscle loss that's one conversation I'm dealing with a general beginner individual who has at 35% body

fat who cannot live in the gym who has to have a life and I get that one a lot right I get a lot of actually uh very

often ethnically oriented I get a lot of look I have dinner with my grandma on Saturday if I don't eat that's an insult

to the family and like and I'm Middle Eastern I totally get that right you do not go to family meals and tell your

your aunts or your grandma I'm on a diet right they have to be able to work that in they travel they have children uh

family I've had them tell me look if I don't go on a date with my partner um I'm going to be single you know so

like these are all these variables that I and even though my my website technically says they're an hour I don't

think I've ever actually finished in an hour unless they had to leave like because I don't again this is why I'm

not not financially as successful as I could be I have this crazy thing where I I want to help people rather than just

make money and I'm not saying it's one or the other but frequently it's one of the other so like if it takes me three

hours to make sure someone's got all the information they need I'll give it to them and I'm not going to cut them off

in an hour because hey time's up because usually it's me talking to so I do the oneoff consultations and I have many

people that will do you know followups or free you know whatever as they get close to their goal and things of that

nature but one-on-one coaching I can't do it even the the other Masters female powerlifter on coaching um I'd

originally in consult with her about diet and I made some throwaway comment M about you know look if a lot of people

having a goal was very important I was like look power is a great sport I love it super and she kind of started

thinking about that and decided she wanted to do it and she'd been putting up videos in my group of her lifting

form technique and it was awful and she so she actually flew down to Austin and I worked with her in sui's home gym one

day for I don't know about six hours because I had to teach her in one day how to competently squat bench and dead

like not Perfection but competently and she told me she had worked with endless other coaches and endless other people

and endless and basically I did in one day in what she couldn't get done in years and now I can she'll send me

videos and I can make Corrections and she's come down to Austin again for she did a meet she's come down for kind of a

followups but just online I I can't do it or rather I won't you know I'm too too much of a like I said a teal a

technical pain in the butt to be able to do it well so good all the same a sixh hour coaching session that's quite a lot

um I mean a lot of personal trainers offer sessions lasting just one hour and fail to accomplish anything in that time

so it was a long day um because I mean like I said we had to kind of start from scratch and I just kind of progressed

her it's a progression I would normally probably do over you know six to eight week span correcting one you know when I

started coaching Sue meeting and we'll talk about this next time like because we really had to rebuild her technique

from scratch and every week I would give her one thing to work on and that would get and then I'd give her a next thing

with this other trainy I had to do it all in one day so it was like three hours on squats and we took a break and

it was a couple hours on bench and then you know then we finished up with deadlifts and they got her far enough so

good on you good AR you um and and you you touched on something all too often overlooked which is the importance of

developing an individualized approach your clients because not everyone is like me I take a food scale to

restaurant l i mean that is another level of neurosis compared to general population oh no absolutely and that's

actually it's a good point something else I do take into account like I've had consultations that want you know the

the all the plumbing they numbers they want specifics they want details and some people need that and it's funny

because I can always tell they'll be talking to me and I can usually pick up on it by the language they're using and

what they're describing to me and I'll kind of proactively go like okay you share your spreadsheets with me and

they're like okay hang on let me pull them up and I'm like I can just and I mean invariably the fields they tend to

be in and I ask you find what they do for a living it's like accounting engineering computers that like their

psychology of being very detailed and numerically and and and or data oriented is why they're good at their jobs right

like you can't you can't be data oriented and being a job that's changes all the time any more than you can you

know have a personality that's a little bit distractable you can't be a computer program and be wired like that so I can

always tell that and they want exact numbers and they want quantity but others are like look I don't either

because they've done it in the past and it Dr them crazy which it can over time or they just don't have the ability to

do it for whatever reason and it doesn't matter right it's it's not a m it's like the reasoning is less relevant to me

than the fact that as one of my earlier mentors Dan duain once put it good advice not taken

is bad advice and that's like one of the like that was a quote I really took to heart early on like you can have the

best most optimal perfect thing but if it's given to the the wrong person and they won't do it then that's a problem I

you know so you've got that you've got the data Orient so you either give them either a diet that can't be screwed up

like that even if they they don't measure everything it's going to be very difficult for them to mess up you give

them you know whatever you know ways of ways of measure uh you know using their hands or eyeballing it or whatever they

track a little like whatever it is but it's really a matter of figuring out what's going to be right for them and

big part of that also is figuring out all right I was asking like what have you done in the past that worked or

didn't work and I had one guy and this was super funny and he goes well look I'm really drawn to extreme

approaches but they never last in the long term and I just looked at and said well don't do that that folks is why I

make the big money such brilliant insight to tell people and I'm being factious about this

but it kind of makes the point right like if you keep doing the same thing over and over and over again and it's

continues to fail just do any like literally just do anything else it matters L just it's time to try

something else but for whatever reason they need me as a sounding board to tell them that like all right and that's like

I said I'll sus that out in terms of do I think this person is it appropriate to do something more extreme or do

something extreme early on are they going to blow up on that because you know like I said what's the conversation

I'm having with them I've had consultations with other powerlifters one who got a little sloppy in the

offseason tried to bulk and went wrong and had to lose a tremendous amount of actual body fat to be in range to make

weight so with her I had to figure out a way to get the body fat off without compromising her performance I've got

someone who's a newbie to the gym I don't have to care right so I can give something more extreme or something

different so that's a lot of what I really try to do is to get all that background and I've got you know

consultation intake form that has you know goals and so I can run some simple you know basic back ofth the envelope

math but like the first 20 minutes is always me asking them these kinds of questions to figure out who I'm talking

to and what I think and and I'll run the options by them and and go look does any one of these either really appeal to you

or you hear it and go absolutely not and there's a lot of those latter ones that I'll describe it and they're like nope I

know I won't do it cool it's off you know there's there's too many different ways to the goal especially with diet

even with training to a degree but it's just like you look the protein's good and your deficits there I don't really

care we can we can negotiate about the rest of it based on that contexts food preferences if they find

when they start can they not stop all those different variant so yeah all that stuff and I find that it tends to really

get ignored because people are like I have the way which is usually what works for them and they presume that it works

for everybody and then they do it and then if it doesn't work for everybody well

they just blame that person for it not working well you didn't follow my magic perfect

program there's altogether too much of that or they just you know so see an exercise selection all the time people

that are built for squatting say oh squats are great for legs yeah probably coaching some with long legs and

terrible biomechanics and you'll see exactly how bad that advice is and that's frequently what happens so but

again but you know you don't you don't make the big money with context and Nuance you make the big money selling

secrets and to sell a secret you got to have one answer and never ever admit that it was wrong and I won't do that so

you have a lot of Integrity Lyle I remember remember um you having talked highly of D duchan whom you mentioned

just earlier could you tell us how he inspired you or you you you talk of him

as your Mentor I've heard some very interesting stories about this Dan duain fellow yeah how did you come to know of

him and why do you admire his work so well so Dan Dan was around in the earlier days of bodybuild late 70s early

880s he actually had a masters in theater and for whatever reason went out to

California to pursue the bodybuilding grp he was had the bug and he was a mediocre bodybuilder and because of that

he started looking for ways to get better and he was very involved in the early days of steroid drug culture and

back then it was a lot just trial and error and he was incredibly smart he was he was creatively smart right in a way

that I am not and I don't mean that I am a grinder in the sense of like when I am trying to tie down like knock out a

problem I will just read everything on the topic till I have every piece of data till it comes together he had the

ability he was like he could be a creative he could look at something and make these lateral jumps in logic that

were as often as not right so he did that he published The Underground steroid handbook because he was the

first person at the time really willing to talk openly and honestly about it and he made enemies left right in center he

was a very polarizing personality something I would know nothing about and he went to jail a couple times over it

because he would not forgo his integrity and not tell the truth about it so he did that he went to jail once

for I think mislabeling he was part of the the underground Black Market steroid trade in Southern California throughout

the 80s um going into the early 90 well no late 80s early 90s that's when Muslim media

2000 showed up as a magazine right prior to that we had Flex Muslim Fitness you know the weer Empire

you had Iron Man which was Steve hullman which is actually one of the better magazines for Naturals quite honestly

you had muscle me intern muscle mag International which is Goofy Canadian stuff and then but it was all basically

supplement so then Bill Phillips introduced muscle media 200000 which at least initially before it became a

supplement catalog for e products was willing to to just you know to touch on the hard topics and one of those was the

drug issue and they got DED to write for them and that's where I think I really became very aware of his writings so I

mean I read every issue um and he was I will say one of the the first people who really was starting to look at some of

the science some of his articles the muscle media did you know he he he was willing to look the research but he was

also very you know like look we need to you know acknowledge what this is you know the limitations of these studies as

it applies especially to prob bodybuilders but with prob bodybuilders you throw enough drugs at the problem

and none of this matters right like that that's the which again I know you video you did the other week talking about Pro

versus natural thing and likee is we come back to that so going into the mid 1990s right I graduated from college

in 93 uh I was in one of the early internet message things called uset it's still

around like this was pre- lisser pre-form pre social media and he got on the internet and he thought this was

amazing stuff and that's when he published his book body oice which was really served to rejuvenate interest in

cyclical ketogenic diet you know by which I mean you five days of very low carbs then like a two-day carb up and

one summer I was bored and not doing anything living home in Nashville and I I got on that you know I tried that diet

it work really well for me for a bunch of other again it fit me physiologically and psychologically kind of going back

to what we were talking about it's a brutal diet as I understand it it can be I mean certainly it's not the easiest

but some people love it some people thrive on low carb diets and other people hate it you know completely but

it was good for me because at the time I didn't do moderation well I was the kind of person I started eating carbs I

couldn't stop so it fit me in the sense of you had two choices zero carbs or all the carbs and that worked great for me

it was much about adherence right I could do one or the other that's a very common thing um so I did that and I did

sort of this uh you know this 20we Pro because everyone was like what's this died and this is so weird and well you

know will you die will you know what'll happen and then I was just this weirdo kind of doing this along with my other

writings and he connected with me because I started to dig into the research on this was very interested in

it and he actually gave me one of my biggest compliments which he said you know I like ly McDonald not because He

follows my diet but because I learn from him and coming from him like he was at such a level in my mind and this

ultimately led to me going out to San Diego to spend three very interesting days with it there's lot lots of stories

some of which I probably shouldn't tell but he was a unique person I mean completely obsessive about

body building his only other interests were highend stereos and recumbent bicycles that was

it that's all I cared about and like I'm kind of the same way I've got like three primary interest I don't care about

anything else and like he he'd made his career in bodybuild but he wanted to be out of it so badly it's such an

unhealthy subculture especially at that level and he wanted off so badly and he just wanted to design but he just like

couldn't get out that's how he made his m money and he was just like he said he wouldn't ever compromise his Integrity

to make a buck he would never not tell the truth he was the first one that he sort of reintroduced DMP to the

subculture for good or for bad and he was very much of the opinion that he believed very firmly that you

should be able to talk honestly about these things with people that that the information needed to be shared for good

or for bad and it's like and of course people would then criticize him oh he's people do it with me too you're

advocating this you're ad like no I'm speaking honestly about it for me to say that something is relatively safe if

used properly it's not me saying it's safe as many ketons will hear it's not me saying you should use it it is me

speaking honestly as I feel about and he was very much the same way and like I said he didn't care if he pissed people

off he would go on he used to go on early talk shows in the 80s and he' to have all the anti-steroid people

spouting all the typical anti-steroid rhetoric and he would just flat out he's like no this is the truth this is the

honest truth about what's being done what's what we've seen what the reality is and people hated him for it and he

passed away fairly young he had a chronic kidney disease and I was just like all right well I guess it's

somebody in the industry has to be the most hated man and it was him so I guess it's me now and I don't you dare pass

the torch down to me yeah you know like I'm not I'm not creatively brilliant the way he was because he was I am just a

grinder I will just read literally every paper until I get the answer I mean and I've worked on projects in the back of

my head for over a decade the stubborn fat solution that I wrote in the 2009 or something that was a decade long project

I mean not in the sense that I was researching it the entire time but I had this ideas and just I would pick up you

know little pieces here and there as I'd seen you research and I would just kind of file them away and i' see what I

needed to see and then one day I I told the the person that I was dating I said you know I could write this book in a

day if I wanted to and they like right and I'm like challenge accepted I mean I was pulling a lot of it from other books

most of it was in my head and you know 18 hours later the first draft was done but it's like that's so that's me I'm

just an obsessive compulsive it's very rare for me to have like a creative breakthrough it's happened one or one or

two times always when I was a little bit on the manic end which that's a whole separate story um but Dan just his mind

worked differently and but he was mean he was a brilliant he was a genius in the field he's absolutely brilliant but

more importantly from a personality standpoint he just he said what he wanted to say and if people didn't like

it tough and I'm okay with that good on you and you're no stranger to saying things of your own that people find

contentious rightly or wrongly one way to put it sure perhaps I mean in our private

correspondences you touched on um you touched on the thought that certain recommendations that float

around in the fitness industry are a bad approach uh to put it mildly frequently

so what I what you know what we're talking about this goes to that video that you did previously about you Mike

iSell saying that Naturals need to train more than the pros which is just he couches it in

probably right but that's just a cya that that's that's a way to still not be wrong even when you're wrong that that's

called be you know I don't think probably is guarded enough no that's just weasel language probably not uh

probably not and even then without a whole lot of contextual Nuance those words don't mean anything right like I I

I mentioned that to another friend I PM with constantly because he's at work at Ford over in the UK and he's like yeah

if you were looking at you know something like Dorian L Yates very low volume where Dorian worked to the

absolute limits that statement might be correct in a very specific contextual way yes but if you're looking at you

know the examples you brought up that's absolutely not true if you know if Naturals need well the other problem

being that like what does that even mean how the pros train Pros trained in all manner of different ways many of

them I would consider suboptimal let's just put it that way in the sense of excuse me said drugs cover it up one of

the other really going back to Dan Shan something that he comments on how old are you see 25 just 10 25 you won't know

you won't know 90% what I'm talking about then so one year they decided to drug test the Mr Olympia oh no I know

about this yeah there was a lot of pressure and also there was this other bodybuilding Federation very brief the

like the wbbb it was by Vince McMahon who was and he wanted to bring that and they

decided to drug test and all the pros looked terrible and duchaine commented he goes

That's what really made me real realiz that the drugs were covering up for so many mistakes in training

Aion because gener I mean genuinely if you throw enough drugs at the problem you can make most of the dumbness with

either your dieting or your training go away when you stop growing you shouldn't don't escalate your volume of training

you escalate your volume of anabolics and that works but is it optimal I mean you know the well well

the pros are the pros for reason I mean I guess but you've also seen the picture you know when certain of these top guys

like Kevin lone when they go off they just like they are hyperresponders they shrink into nothing and the types of

training that many of them do simply don't work for Naturals and there are actual I mean there can be benefits for

the way the pros train in terms of using higher volumes and lower relative intensities and pumping up more because

and I think you actually commented on this when you get that strong right when you get to Ronnie

Coleman level when you're back squatting whatever ungodly 800 he did for that trip like you can't just do intensity

because it will wear out your joints your connective tissue will give out there is some logic to just letting the

drugs do the work and just go in and kind of do what I mean a lot of those guys are very strong but they don't have

to keep pushing the intensity whereas with Naturals that's not the case you can't

just do High Vol volumes with no Progressive tension overload which I've been ranting about for 30 years now and

and have you have it get you anywhere right at some point you have to add weight to the bar now again another one

of Mike's lovely Straw Men when I with me in the volume thing it's like well you can't add weight every week well no

one said you had to no one said you had to yeah where this idea again this gets back to your original question about the

just the fitness industry in general that supposedly have degrees frequently advanced in exercise science who seem to

be unaware of basic concepts one of which being that there's no definition of progressive overload that I've ever

seen in my life that said it meant a weekly increase in anything ever agressive overload occurs over time

doesn't have to be every workout every week every two week there is no it is you add you progress when you're ready

for it when you've made the adaptation so one of Mike's things was oh well you can't add weight every week so you

should add sets well who says you can add sets every week in a way that's almost harder like adding reps is

another thing we'll just add reps every week and like look one rep is worth about two to three% on the bar if you

can't add two to three% to the bar you can't add a rep and not everyone is good at adding reps and many exercises don't

lend themselves to adding reps if something is a training stimulus in terms of its volume and intensity now

you don't have to change anything until you adapt and it's no longer so any where this idea came from oh you

know you can't add weight every well nobody said you could that that's not a but for some reason in this industry

that seems to have been forgotten kind of like the interaction between frequency intensity and volume as people

prattle about oh this volume and these comparisons and these intensities and these it's like you were looking at

these variables in total isolation and it doesn't make any sense right so as an example and then I'll

actually get back to your question about the recommendations that are coming through off and on so there's studies

that look at training to failure versus training very far away from failure so they'll take a bunch of people and

they'll have them do like 3 by10 rep max and the Smith machine Squad like three by 10 to failure or six sets of five at

the same way and they'll find it up the failure causes more neuromuscular fatigue meaning less bar speed lower

vertical jump than six sets of five well yes three work sets does tend to cause more fatigue than six warm-up sets I

agree with you I would not debate that however well there's a lot of hows okay one is this actually a valid comparison

to what we're talking about when people are talking about in bodybuilding well don't go to failure but stay two to

three reps reps and Reserve within two to three reps how is five reps and Reserve relevant okay that's number one

number two normally volume and intensity scale inversely right what hasn't been compared they're

like oh they're gonna because what they're telling me is that 3 by10 to failure is excessively neuromuscular

fatig but 26 sets of quads twice a week is okay now are you really going to try to tell me that 3 by10 to failure or not

is more fatiguing than 26 sets of squats but nobody they don't it can't be both either right right or that Brad shenfeld

study that supposedly did 45 sets to failure three times a week for eight weeks so 3 by 10 once is too fatiguing

let's see 45 sets hang on 45 time 3 that's 135 sets to failure per week times eight weeks it's like

1,200 sets to failure somehow that study oh yeah completely valid but if you do 3 by10 to failure

okay so that's one again they just don't seem to compare 3 by10 to failure to 10 sets

of eight at two reps and Reserve like do an actual valid comparison that's ecological to what bodybuilders are

doing because those studies are looking at athletes in the sense of you have to

control neuromuscular fatigue if you have a a SP an athlete comp a performance athlete they cannot wreck

themselves on a Monday in the weight room and have to do Technical Training on a Tuesday or do speed work on a

Wednesday I fail to see how three sets of 10 to failure causing excessive neuromuscular fatigue for 48 hours it's

relevant when most bodybuilders train a muscle group once or twice a week and now for anybody listening to

this because people love to mishear me might like Li lie about me I am not saying you should train to failure

honestly if you look at my recommendations over the last 30 years compared to what most of these twits are

saying I recommend failure way less frequently than they do but because I actually said this is what failure looks

like was like oh L's a failure guy are you people all illiterates I said repeatedly I'm not

saying you need to train to failure saying you need to know where it is and this is what it looks like but again I

can say that a million times it doesn't matter if people are going to let hear me because they'll be like oh you know

take the fourth set of every exercise to failure okay I don't even recommend that on a

regular basis then I see these powerlifting programs I love and they're like you do your work in the deadlift

and then you finish with an AM wrap and as many reps as possible number one am wrap deadlifts show me or squats show me

because I know what that looks like and it's not as many reps as possible it's as many reps as you're willing to do

right I squat it's a complete failure that means getting pinned at the bottom and having to dump the ball there

recommending that every workout and somehow that's okay but 3x10 to failure is bad and

again I'm not saying it is or it isn't I'm asking questions that none of them so yeah they seem to have forgotten

frequency intensity volume what about type of exercise all these studies use Squat and bench press you can tell me

barbell curls cause excessive R muscular fatigue why are we still using back squats when these people aren't trained

well enough for it to matter right don't use whatever that's a whole separate thing so this gets into like the fitness

industry seems to just ignore these basic principles of like said how frequency

intensity you know it's like fine if you want to do a lot of volume for whatever reason you like being in the gym you

have no life better stay two or three reps from failure I wouldn't disagree with that if you want to train to

failure you're going to have to cut your volume I mean number one you can't do it anyone who tells me oh I do 20 sets to

failure no you don't I could I could put anybody on the floor in two sets if they went to True failure I could W I've done

it before and I'm sure you have to and you know what that means breathing squ similarly if someone comes to me and

says I I don't have a lot of time I got to be in and out of the gym in 30 minutes I've only got time to do two

sets of each exercise I'm G to tell them well you better train to All Out volume intensity is going to has to vary

how frequently are you training training once a week who gives a damn if it's 48 Hours of EX why does this

matter you're training twice a week that's still 96 hours between workouts why does this matter yeah I'm not saying

go I'm just saying I asked these questions and suddenly there's no answers because or they just they're

either ignoring it or they're too stupid to see the contradiction I don't know the answer so you get into all of that

you get into the you gotta add stuff every week like are you sure you got your degrees didn't come out of a a

chocolate like a box of cereal like I find it but but you've also got the give me one moment go

ahead I see that he's got several copies of the women's book uh yeah somehow I ended up with a bunch probably ordered a

box off of all what a good book by the way congratulations it was something it nearly broke me but my my once every

10-year heavily researched book always nearly nearly breaks me was keto in 1998 protein in 2008 women's in 2018 which

means I guess 2028 it's got to be volume two if I can ever face it down so so getting

back what's that godspeed yeah well I mean it's actually it's partially written while I was working on that like

I had all this training stuff that was going to actually in a way be more involved and I'm like if I wait to

finish finish this a it's never going to get done and B it's going to be 600 pages long so I kind of scrip that out

and I'm like this is going to be nutrition and fat loss is arguably more relevant and then I'll I'll do training

exercise stuff in a separate separate book so what I've seen in the fitness industry and this is

admittedly it's a generalized problem in sort of the overall in a lot of fields is that you

have to generate regular contact so on the one hand right so just as a brief again brief history you know back in the

day we had bodybuilding magazines once a month all the new Secrets would come out and everybody would change their workout

Dr Ken lyser called it muscle media Cent then the internet started and when websites kind of came about in you know

the mid to late 90s it was you know you had stuff like T Nation which was TC L who was had been

Bill Phillips right-hand man and they would run like three articles a week but then what they saw that every time they

put up content they would get more visitors and they would sell more supplements it was five days a week

seven days a week twice a day like now you probably go over there's probably seven articles per day all of which

contradict one another one of my fav or if they don't contradict each other on that day

they'll be contradicted by the next day one of my favorite stories when teenan first came out they were initially a

prince magazine and they actually bundled their first issue with one of the sof recore adult magazines in

America wow so I got to actually buy it for the Articles like I did actually get to do that the one time so this is

within a single issue of the magazine you had one article by TC LOM saying he needed to eat six times a day because

Suma wresters ate once a day and they were obese had written byy Hoff meckler saying that eating six times a day made

you fat and you should do one meal a day of the warrior done same issue two articles saying diametrically the

opposite thing How can any so that was that okay so then we had tation and multiple

articles per day and then we got into social media Instagram and if you go look at you know most of the supposed

evidence-based Fitness people like you got to kind of Wonder like when are they doing their jobs because they're posting

to Instagram four five six times a day and then now with Tik Tok and all the other stuff and YouTube every week

every hour every minute every second you can go find something you should never do always do this is wrecking your games

you must do this you must do that and it's awful especially because in an era where you have to generate damn near

daily content to get that sweet YouTube ad Revenue you

just I mean there's just not that much to talk about right like Mak no mistake when I did my website there's like 400

articles on my website but that was generated over a 20 years spam and part of the reason I would updated is I got

nothing else to say genuinely like there's nothing so what so what you see happening is a lot of it is fad jumping

like all right what's the new study that's we all have to jump on and I mean you've been in this long enough but I

saw it every two or three years in bodybuilding and you see it in cycling and endurance sports that I was involved

in the trends change and usually it's like what is the best guy doing that's the right way to train you see a lot of

that in training doesn't lend itself to quite as much silliness like on a bike you have to do the miles right like you

have to you have there's only so much you can't you can't go from doing 40 sets a week to Mike mener heavy duty on

a on Endurance Sports it's like it doesn't promote itself as much to to the sillly also it's a performance sport

bodybuilding is not and that is a whole different kettle of fish so you know it goes from high volumes and then people

get burned out and then intensity comes back in and I guess right now we're seeing kind of a shift in mener and hit

heavy duties coming back into play and everybody will switch their workouts and start making games and then they'll get

bored with that and then volume will come back in and you know so we go back even in the recent most recent five

years right so for however many years it's like he moderate volumes 10 to 20 sets you know we had the worn bum meta

analysis which is what I've based it's funny I based some of my earlier stuff on it and as much as people like to crap

on it we all kind of keep we always kind of keep coming back to it like if you

really look at the look at those volumes look at those numbers and look at where the data like it all kind of always

comes back to that and um but then Brad's volume study came and all of a sudden High volumes were in never mind

the criticisms never mind that he punked out and ignored you know everybody his little crew because they're all part of

this little circle and realize this is not new the thousands is a totally different Circle Jour Allan crosgrove

jimmmy Moore Jimmy somebody else and they would just pimp each other's stuff and then there was mean old Mr ly going

actually here's what the science says and they would go you suck you're stupid F you and they would make their money

and I would just be like I'm just G to keep saying and then a few years later everybody would realize during the 2000s

that's when interval training really came popular first it was interval training

is superior to steady state cardio debatable but whatever made no mistake I'd written about the tremble interval

study in my keto book 10 years before that but neither here nor there then it became steady state cardio makes you fat

I kid you not it went from being as effective to less effective to actually detrimental on like so what

you're telling me is that 40 Years of competition bodybuilders both natural and supplemented getting into shape with

low intensity cardio now you're talking make because they had something to sell which was turbulence training so then

everybody started doing intervals six days a week and I said this is dumb most elite athletes don't do it more than

twice a week and you're not better and they weren't dieting and everyone said you're stupid and me and everybody got

burned out and everybody got overtrained and a few years later was like here's why walking is underrated it's like

H just it just kills me and then we just go right back through again and I'm like I'm just sticking with story until I see

really conclusive data it's going to change my opinion on something I'm not going but it it becomes fad jumping so

first it was the volume thing and what's funny about that right so Brad's paper came out and I read it went

huh he and I discuss this because he did he he misrepresented a piece of data and that this isn't the first time I've seen

him do it he will because he knows people won't check he knows people won't actually go pull the reference and see

if what he said it said is what it actually said but I will and I do and he absolutely misrepresented that data on

top of the statistical Shenanigans they played on top of all that other stuff but rather than address my valid

criticisms they all just block me and punk out of my group like the gurus that they are but the thing was if you

actually go look after that none of them believe it not a single one of them not they all I mean they all said so ly

sucks and you know Eric Helms wrote his little puff piece for math where he was like well I do research and I think this

is good science I'm like that's an appeal to Authority that's not dude that's a logical fallacy of the worst

kind and he was like well I think Brad study is valid but the research still says 10 to 20 sets well they can't be

both right but he's got to Hue to the master they don't get to criticize Brad because they get kicked out of the Inner

Circle me I don't give a damn I don't give a damn about being the Inner Circle I never have done and I certainly won't

sell them but none of them ever believed in they all recommending the same volumes hilariously even Brad didn't

believe it have you read Max Muscle 2 yes I have right I've read it and I've seen the workout plan within it well the

workouts are terrible they they are written as if they what they look like to me is

that a brand new it it reminds me of what I was doing when I was 25 when I was straight out of my bachelor's degree

and I didn't have a lot of experience and I'd read tutor bmus periodization book they are the kind of workouts that

someone brand spanking new out of school would write before they got some experience nobody in bodybuilding trains

three weeks on with one easy week nobody half those workouts can't even be done they are written purely the strength

cycle workouts are hilarious you jump into heavy deadlifts without even a Breakin period stra metabolite workouts

that don't do anything you're supposedly doing 3 by 20 at one to two reps reserve on 60 seconds like that's how I tore a

hamstring right exactly but but you read like you go through the volumes because I did I took

a bunch of notes somebody got it to me just to make me angry because that's why people buy me these things because I

don't buy I don't buy them anymore I can't my blood pressure is too high as a and you go through it and you're like

all right the average set count nine per week per mle for body part and six on the D Lo my lowest volume intermediate

workout is 14 to 16 sets a week and always have been in that rank there was one block in the

hypertrophy Block it's 14 sets per week which is reasonable and then there's a two week overreaching period of 22 C

where's 45 Brad 45 is not anywhere in that book because even he didn't believe it and I did a video last year one of my

two videos last year and I went went back because suddenly Mike isrel Mr her high volume Mr her maximum recoverable

volume if you ever seen the early NV charts they're hysterical 36 sets a week for traps Just Junk like that and

suddenly he was like are you doing too many sets yes Mike could told them to none of them believe and they all

slowly walked it back over the last four or five years right back to the same 1020 sets which is what I was saying all

along and and they all jumped on that right briefly Eric Helms and Jeff nippard and

a bunch of them jumped on the high frequency bodybuilding never mind it was not supported by an iota of the research

research only matters when it supports something when they're selling something right it doesn't it somehow ceases to

matter when they've got a FB to jump on and then that died off and then now we're right back to super high volumes

because of that stupid 52 set paper that even uh Suza he did a video on his Instagram talking about how badly the

industry misinterpreted it even he thinks he was one of the authors of the paper right yeah yes even e the one that

said look we were looking at this but because again when people jumped on that one little Edge Lord means none of them

it was clear none of them had read the paper if they had they made sure not to get into the nuances of like what the

researchers actually said in the discussion regarding the results and on top of ignoring the fact that all right

it was quads only how are you going to do this to a body how are you going to work to 50 sets a week for the eight or

nine major muscle groups you GNA do 400 sets a week like this is never they have to generate content that they have to so

every new paper they have to jump on this is the new big thing and then they suddenly misrepresented because they

know nobody will go check the the reference and actually read it I mean I will but they've all blocked me because

the easiest way to be right is for no body to ever see criticism all and that kind of leads back to your question all

the volume recommendations all these things that are more fad driven than anything

else the big problem and make no mistake I believe in science I believe in research but exercise science is

a difficult field to do good research my my first Mentor my primary Mentor was a materials engineer Fitness for him was a

hobby he studied rocks I kid you not he studied rocks he actually was in Perth for quite many

many many years and then I met him when he was in Oregon and he did he probably did more to help me with critical

thinking because he was a PhD engineer and he would just tear holes in any idea I had made me really think you duain was

a different sort of influence on me in terms of I approach to things and he said flat out he goes ex science is a

joke and more and more I'm starting to think he was right with rocks what's what's the variability on a

rock half a percent in either direction right one rock is like of a certain type it's kind of like another rock when

you're looking at humans you've got even assuming you could control this stuff well and you can you can never

control nutrition you can do your best to balance it out you can do your best with this stuff you know you can oversee

the workout which if I don't start seeing some videos of this stuff I believe them less and less and less

whenever I see this workout can't be done by 99% of people and the exceptions don't matter like even when I said that

I'm like you need I want to see the videos of these and someone asked Brad why he didn't video it and just more and

more excuses well we would have to hire hire somebody then we'd have to hire somebody

to you know to to review it no you don't just put it on your damn Instagram with your other trit nons this should be

trivial every phone has a camera stop making excuses because I want to see what actually was done because I don't

believe it I've seen to I don't believe I don't believe these workouts are being done the way they're

described but we have the problem of even if you could control all that there is a tenfold variation between any two

individuals in their biological response and we're seeing that in some of the hyper responder research that you

know and they're doing studies now that are like rather than comparing say me and you we're going to have us do one

work out with one arm and the other workout with the other we're now our own control or one leg which is to avoid

that and they're finding that hyperresponders grow better than non-responders no matter what they do

like the difference in any one given individual from one workout to the next is like fivefold difference but they may

still grow 40 fold better than a non-respondent right so when you're comparing three groups of

people speculatively if a bunch of hyperresponders get into one particular group it will make it look like that

group is superior not because of anything to do with anything other than and when you when you start to look at

the the individual the raw data for the results the spread is huge like you look at Brad so he's like all right well here

was the lowest volume group and it was like this many grew and this many shrank and here was the medium volume group and

it's a little bit clustered more towards better gains and here was the highest and you and you look and you're like

many times you see there's this one guy this freak Show responder who gained 10 times more than everyone else and that

pulls the average up well do averages matter or do the endal responses matter unfortunately we are not at the point

where we know who a h who can who is a Hypes sponder who isn't beforeand regardless of that even

ignoring that all of these studies are 8 to 12 weeks in duration I think the NIS paper the the

more recent one was longer than that because they built up over whatever time period from 22 sets to 52 I think it was

longer but it raises that issue and again I know this is what you touched on in the video you did about Mike's thing

is the issue of training on J because okay fine let's say that over 12 weeks these super high volumes are superior

Now Let's ignore the fact that they literally never are whenever when you actually look

honestly at the statistics it's always the moderate groups that do better I mean frequently

there's no difference in in volumes but when there are differences it is always the moderate volume with those guys

right Brad and and creger and them could play statistical word games till Cal's come home about how their worthless bf10

values meant something but they didn't they didn't according to every beian statistic reference you can find

including the one that ker referenced in the paper itself the P values didn't support the higher

volumes all failed bayian Statistics were zero on upper body and meaningless on lower volum and

yet higher volumes are better okay but that's not what if any other paper that they didn't like had

had those statistics they would have said the opposite it's a lovely game right the

statistics apply regardless of whose name is on the paper it's but if Brad's name is on the paper the whole crw will

defend it regardless the whole problem being that okay great let's say it did let's say working up to 52 sets for a

muscle group did give you better growth well again a that was quads only show me how you're going to do this for the

whole body more 50 sets like this sure yeah show sure yeah I mean ly even the 10 to 20 set per week recommendation if

I do that for my whole body it just buries me right and there you get into the whole issue of you know overlap and

doing lower volumes for smaller muscle groups specialization Cycles I have to do specialization basically and that's

this is another thing that this is um I've been saying for years nobody agrees with me yet well you

probably will with the ma the major figures and it'll be another few years and they'll all realize that I'm right

and then take credit for it because that is the history of my career because there is this idea that as you get more

advanced you need more volume and in actual the exact

opposite yeah primy it seems like crap less V well where that came from was back in the 70s with the Russians as

their athletes got more advanced they did more and more and more and more training however they were full-time

athletes it broke most of them and as they got more advanced they did more and more and more more drugs that's where

this whole thing comes from but if you look at most well not Endurance Sports again different whole different

physiological thing but if you look at like sprinting you look at I mean I guarantee you Ray Williams is the first

man to Raw squat a thousand pounds he squats once a week he is not doing large volumes because you can't what is he

gonna do I mean even at 75% that's 750 pounds you really tell me he's gonna do high frequency

powerlifting no that's for weak people FL out say I mean it just is once you get stronger and faster and the training

is a greater absolute load you have to do L because their recovery is limited and you because there are

there's still people out there going oh yeah you can bring up everything as an advanced bodybuilder no you can't you

can't put enough volume and intensity into everything at once to begin with because the workouts are unsurvivable

and even if you could you can't recover from it period we got to be careful Lyle not to run

into the issue of people listening to this and interpreting us as having just agreed with Mike's blanket

recommendation that we should train more than the pros um well there are they they are

training a lot right because they just keep escalating their drugs they're not the ones who are they they aren't

decreasing volumes as they get to higher levels they do typically in because they're increasing their doses but for

Naturals it doesn't work good thank you thank you yes yeah no you're you're absolutely right nor and I'd also

mention that most people that think they're Advanced aren't so y'all again I've been on the internet too long and

every Advanced trainee with hyperintense training with perfect form I've ever seen not ever generally 99 times out of

a 100 they show me the video and go yeah n you're not um so so yeah the problem then comes in like all right let's say

these super high volumes work for 12 what about the other 40 what about the long career because yeah you can get

away with absolutely crazy stuff for short periods of time I've done it I once did for six weeks when I was

switching to ice speed skating from inline I had most ridiculous six week training I've ever done in my life

because I knew it was six weeks only I had exactly that I gave myself exactly that amount of time G myself a few days

off in in the middle of it because you can get away with absurd stuff for short Peri of Time problem is nobody stops at

short periods of time and they always get broken one of my favorite stories

probably come up again we probably see me Matt Gary who's apparently the coach of you the US powerlifting team which is

a thing you're reviewed his book recently as I yeah it's fantastic and um I wasn't aware that USA had a

powerlifting team until I heard of him I mean I guess that's who we sent to ipf um and he he's told a story one of his

podcasts he says yeah LIF for call the me and go coach you know can you put 50 kilos on my total in8 weeks and they'll

go well I mean probably but you're just as likely to either get hurt or so burnt out that you

quit the sport and that that kind of made the really good point right like you can you can push the limits for

short periods of time to try to eek out that extra percent and that may be beneficial at the highest levels you

know the old Soviet double shock micro cycles and they would you know excuse me deliberate overreaching cycles

and things of that nature but they were done very carefully under a coach's watchful eye to make sure that as soon

as the first sign of PRS they would but people don't do that because self-coached people are very bad at that

I'm not uh totally I'm not saying I'm not wasn't bad at it it was only later in my in my athletic career like I said

when I did this six weeks of insanity I flat out said six weeks tops and I'm done because i' learn the i' learned

enough times the hard way so yeah you can go all out for 12 weeks and maybe you'll get a few percent extra out of it

maybe that's assuming you don't get hurt assuming you don't get burnt out yeah but then what happens next when you are

now so exhausted that you now take the next month off pissing about like most people piss about it's like so what's

better in the longer term is it better to try to push at the extremes to eek out that extra cou per over a short

period of time or just get a nice continuous rate of progress over time right again I know I keep saying we'll

talk about this next week with soon but that's how I approach your power lift right a lot of lifters will go to meet

they'll be like they'll compete once or twice a year and go like all right I gotta I gotta put a 20 kilo

PR and they'll go for it and they'll wreck themselves in training and it won't happen on the platform my goal

with her every 13 weeks two and a half kilos per lip yep that was it because across Four competitions a year that's

the same 10 kilos but I know I can get that out of her without having to destroy her with volume and intensity

the same thing with bodybuilding there's also the issue I'll send you the link to it um so a paper came out a couple weeks

ago that I I talked about and it's kind of analyzing the dose response thing by Buckner and kind of brought up some

issues about how the growth in Brad papers are double what literally any other sner generated yeah in history

ever and um probably due to the cell swelling which is something I and many others have been bringing up for years

assumption that oh swelling's gone at 48 Hours yeah maybe after three sets we can't say again I do wonder you

know these guys like oh I have a PhD and you don't even do science and I'm like and yet you can't seem to understand

this basic you cannot assume that the swelling from three sets will decrease at this or that the swelling from 15

sets or 26 sets will decrease in the same amount of time as from three sets because they all site the same damn

paper by a Japanese researcher who looked at nine sets of bench press a week and the swelling from the final

threet workout was gone at 48 72 hours you cannot assume that the same occurs for massively higher volumes now not

saying it does or it doesn't because people mishar me too I'm saying we don't know and a good

scientist would know that we need to do the fundamental work to know whether or not this is actually the case regardless

of that I guess Buckner he did a round table with some people about this volume issue and I'll send it to the time point

because it was really interesting and he does kind of mention Brad in a couple different context but I guess one of the