Part 1

Carl:  Hey, welcome back to another episode of Super Human Radio. It’s Monday and we are launching the day and the week with an amazing show. We’re going to be joined by Dr. Hypertrophy himself, Dr. Brad Schoenfeld, to talk about the science of building muscle. We’re going to update you on many of the studies that he’s been publishing and how you can benefit from this information.

A little bit later in the show, around the top of the second hour, we’re going to be joined by a listener who has a story to share. We’ll just keep it a secret until then. I just want to thank our title sponsor All American EFX and All American Pharmaceuticals. Go to SuperHumanRadio.com to learn more about them.

Without further ado – I almost feel like he should have his own intro music – Dr. Brad Schoenfeld. How are you doing?

Dr. Schoenfeld:  I’m doing great, Carl. Always great to be back.

Carl:  I don’t think there is anybody – and I say this with all due respect to the scientific community that we are also fortunate to rub elbows with within this physical culture community – but I don’t think there’s anybody who has done the narrowly-focused research that you have done. It’s pretty much exclusive to the area of hypertrophy. I know you deviate a little bit. You did the study once about fasted cardio versus fed state cardio. But really your love and your passion is getting down to the lowest common denominator of what ultimately builds muscle. Is that accurate statement?

Dr. Schoenfeld:  Yeah, pretty much. Body composition overall is my focus but I have a particular focus in muscle hypertrophy and muscle growth, specifically also the variables. I haven’t done much in basic research looking at hormones and other things in test tubes doing in vitro work. It’s mostly really applied research on different variables is my primary focus. So it’s looking at rest intervals and frequency of training, repetitions, all the things that go into creating routines and what optimizes those components to bring about maximum hypertrophy.

Carl:  If you hear smooching and you feel your ass is getting a little damp, isn’t that really what is most important? I’m not taking away from the research that’s done in vitro. When we look at these molecules, these hormones, these actions, they don’t always translate to anything in the human body. But more importantly, a lot of that stuff is hard to create an action plan around. So how do you take some of that science and integrate it into what you’re doing? What you do, it’s actually actionable type stuff like, “This rep range, this rest period,” these are things that people can take and use.

Dr. Schoenfeld:  That’s absolutely true. Specifically what you see in vitro or mechanistically it doesn’t necessarily translate into long-term result. Just the acute protein synthetic response to the acute effect on muscle protein synthesis of let’s say taking in protein or doing different types of resistance training routines. Studies have shown they don’t necessarily correlate to what happens over the long term.

But that said, having a fundamental understanding of the mechanisms really is essential to furthering our understanding of how things can potentially work in the gym and that ultimately fuels a lot of my research. It guides me in terms of doing practical research and an understanding maybe I want to manipulate this variable because this has been shown to work. So they are very, in my opinion, synergistic. Although from a practical standpoint, you don’t get a lot from understanding that, yeah, the AMPK pathway is up regulated to a greater degree with one type of training versus another.

Carl:  What research have you recently published? It’s hard to keep up because you really are producing an amazing body of work right now.

Dr. Schoenfeld:  Yeah, I have several studies. Since the last time we talked, which has been a while, I have a number of studies which have been published.

Most recently I’ve had two long-term longitudinal studies. One was looking at high reps, so it’s 25 to 35 reps versus 8 to 12 reps on muscle hypertrophy and strength. These are highly controlled studies. We looked at just varying the repetition range while keeping the rest intervals, the number of sets. Everything else in the routine was the same – the number of exercises. We had an eight-week routine where we had two groups of well-trained subjects. They had over four years resistance training experience. We took them through hard training. Every set was taken to a muscle failure and we really pushed these guys. After the eight-week period, there were no significant differences in muscle growth in the biceps, triceps to quads. So it really was quite an interesting study.

By the way, I’ll just take a step back. I did meta-analysis which was published – I think it was December of last year, so fairly recently – and we looked at all the relevant data up to that point which have been published. This was along with my colleague, James Krieger, as well as Dan Ogborn who is another terrific scientist. We looked at basically all the research that have been done on low repetition, so below 60% 1RM versus above 65%, and that showed no substantial differences on hypertrophy between the two. I had always attributed this to a newbie effect. So if you take someone who is not well-trained, you can do cardio.

Carl:  To build muscle.

Dr. Schoenfeld:  Yeah. They will build muscle from. I had discounted in my hypothesis was, we’re going to see greater growth in the moderate rep, the hypertrophy rep for the subjects, the hypertrophy rep group, because they’re well-trained and that the lower intensity exercise, high rep exercise, would not promote enough from an adaptive response. My hypothesis was very sadly disproven.

That said, basically there are a couple of take homes here. Number one, certainly take home the fact that you can build muscle across a very wide spectrum of rep ranges much greater than what had been previously thought. It has always been said that below 65 (60% to 65%), you’re not going to build appreciable muscle. That is not the case. That said, there are a couple of things taken into account.

Number one, we did not do biopsy work, so we did not look localize where this hypertrophy was occurring, specifically Type I fibers versus Type II fibers. For those who don’t know, your Type I fibers are endurance-oriented fibers. They can carry on activity for long periods of time so they’re less fatigable. But they’re not supposed to have the same capacity for growth. Certainly, they don’t have the same capacity for strength to produce force.

The type 2 fibers are your strength-oriented fibers. Those fibers fatigue very quickly but they have the capacity to produce greater amounts of force. There is some emerging research out of Russia showing that high rep training, so lighter weights, higher reps promotes greater Type I fiber hypertrophy in the endurance-oriented fibers and your moderate rep training promotes greater Type II fiber hypertrophy.

This certainly is a hypothetical line of reasoning that I, at this point, subscribe to and it gives credence to the practical take home that you want to combine repetition ranges. If you want to train throughout a spectrum, let’s say anywhere from 3-5 reps up to 20-25 reps (perhaps even more). I don’t think you probably need to go above 20-25 reps but training throughout that spectrum of rep ranges will maximize muscle hypertrophy if your goal is purely to pack on muscle.

A couple of other interesting things from the study. Number one, the lower repetition group saw a much greater strength increases as you might expect. The higher repetition group saw a much greater muscle endurance improvements as you might expect. There is this strength-endurance continuum. So if you’re training for a functional outcome, certainly you’d want to focus on one versus another.

Also one thing that doesn’t get brought out in studies most of the time: training with very high reps is a grueling workout and roughly half the subjects who undertook the high repetition workout, high repetition group, puke within the first week of training and we’re really not doing well. We had more dropouts from that group. It really is a grueling type of training. The acidosis, the acidic load that builds up is hard to take and you have to be willing to stomach it, especially at the beginning. Your body does start to adjust to it after a while and most of the subjects after several weeks were fine. But these are things you do need to take into account.

Carl:  Especially if you’re an older adult and cardiovascularly you are somewhat not in peak performance. Let’s say you want to go tread lightly into the high rep stuff. There’s a lot of good research that was pretty old that showed that the lower reps stuff, while it may stimulate the strength development , it didn’t put the strain on the heart that the high rep stuff does – and for obvious reasons. You're really making a great demand. You’re actually bridging that aerobic/anaerobic threshold, if you will.

Dr. Schoenfeld:  Yeah. You really don’t get quite into the aerobic zone and in the set’s last, that 90 seconds which is still primarily glycolytic. But you are correct in that, really pushing this certainly from a blood pressure standpoint, it’s been shown that training was either very heavy weights and/or light weights that are done over repeated periods of time is not good in that respect.

Really my focus has been on what’s best for maximizing strength. Obviously, if you’re talking about at-risk population, other considerations are going to come into effect.

Carl:  Is there any truth to the idea that you can actually influence Type I and Type II fibers into converting to one or the other?

Dr. Schoenfeld:  First of all, the extent that it happens is very limited. From the evidence I have seen, there is a greater conversion of Type IIs to Type Is and that’s brought about primarily through doing ultra long distance type of work, not through resistance training in any way that I know. Converting from I to II would be through a resistance mechanism. I have not seen really compelling evidence that that happens practically. And if it does, I think it’s very, very limited. Like I said, it’s easier apparently to convert from Type IIs to Type Is when you’re doing like two hours a day of running. Even then, the extent to which it happens seems to be limited to less than 10% of the population.

Carl:  Is there any evidence that there is the newbie factor that you mentioned before? I’ve always wondered if there’s a way to leverage that, to slingshot to greater gains so that if you took off maybe a certain number of days or even a week every let’s say five, six, seven, eight weeks, you could actually use that newbie effect to your benefit and actually slingshot into greater gains. Is there any evidence that we can leverage that phenomenon?

Dr. Schoenfeld:  That’s a really interesting question. There has been some research that’s been carried out by a group out of Japan. It’s something quite similar to that where they would take intermittent breaks, so basically de-train. And it didn’t come out that they saw a better result but actually the hypertrophy – you didn’t lose anything. You were able to actually maintain over time similar amounts of hypertrophy even though you’re de-trained. De-loading is a common strategy that’s employed where you would take a lower volume and lower intensity of efforts. That’s mostly for rejuvenation.

Here’s a kind of a different take on that. This has not been well studied. It’s the novelty effect. Rather than a newbie effect equal to novelty effect – and that’s another consideration to take into account in this case, from the study that I mentioned on low versus high reps – and that all the people that we have in the study (like I said, they were all well-trained subjects), none reported training with more than 12 reps or maybe one had up to 15 reps but certainly none were training anywhere near in the repetition range that we were putting them through. Virtually everyone was 12 reps and under.

Just the novelty factor that you can make a case that they’re Type I fibers were underdeveloped, where their Type II fibers had greater development, and thus they would see this greater growth at the beginning because their fibers they had a greater feeling. Now that could give credence to doing to the typical block periodization type of approach where you’re going to take a block of say four weeks of light load training then four weeks of moderate and four weeks of heavy load training so that you’re introducing novelty conceivably over that time, whether that plays out in practice is hypothetical. It’s not been studied, certainly to my knowledge. I don’t think anyone has done a real good study that has looked at it. At least in those types of blocks, certainly it has been looked at in blocks where the repetition ranges like 10-12 and 8-10 and so you’re having a much narrower focus and that really doesn’t give you a lot of insight into how it happens over much wider loading zones.

Carl:  I want to delve into just for a moment some gender specific or gender differences when we talk about hypertrophy, because women are now getting it. They’re getting that muscle is metabolic currency, it’s going to help to prolong life, it’s going to give the a fuller range of joy in their lives, make them more ambulatory as they age, and even influences bone mineral uptake. The list goes on and on. And women tend to be better trainers, in my humble opinion, than men because they leave their ego at the door and they’re willing to do what you tell them if you tell them that this is the right way to do it. Am I off baseline to make some of those statements, do you think?

Dr. Schoenfeld:  No. You’re spot on.

Carl:  I want to talk about gender specific hypertrophy training and get into that a little bit. We’re talking right now with Dr. Brad Schoenfeld. If you want to know how to build muscle, there really is no one out there today that is doing the kind of work that Dr. Brad Schoenfeld is doing.

Part 2

Carl:  Welcome back. We’re talking with Dr. Brad Schoenfeld right now. We’re talking about building muscle. The discussion is going to change ever so slightly as we talk about gender differences, are there any, and what we can learn from each other: both men and women.

When we talk about building muscle, it used to be exclusively a male-dominated discussion but we have a lot of women out there today who are really as strong as some men when it comes to strength and conditioning types sports, cross fit, Olympic lifting and so on. So they’re really interested in this discussion, as well. Do they need to look at anything differently or is it pretty much the same for men as it is for women?

Dr. Schoenfeld:  There really are, as far as programming, not many differences on how you’d want to program assuming the goals are the same for men versus women. Women do have blunted hypertrophic response. So on a relative basis, meaning a percentage basis, there’s actually fairly equal gains seen between men and women at least in the initial stages of training. Meaning that if you’re going to initiate a study, you’ll see let’s say 10% gains in muscle mass. However, women are starting out from a much lower baseline so the actual amount of muscle that they’re adding is substantially less and that’s thought to be due to a lack of testosterone primarily.

Interestingly, estrogen is anabolic. Most people don’t think of it this way. Most guys you tell them you're going to “estrogenize” will be upset. But at least in women, estrogen does promote anabolic benefits. It’s one of the reasons why it’s perceived – and this has actually been shown pretty clearly in the literature – that during menopause, the negative effects of losing muscle are greater on women than they are men. So the loss of testosterone in men, the age-related loss does not have as great in effect on their loss of muscle as the age-related loss of estrogen does on women. Part of this might be due to the fact that women are starting out with less muscle as it is and thus it’s going to have a greater effect any loss but there are effects that just the loss of estrogen, the protective anabolic protective effects have a greater negative effect in women.

Carl:  Also, estrogen influences lipolysis. It influences fat loss. So when estrogen starts to go down, fat goes up. It could be in response to the body’s desire to produce more estrogen so there’s more aromatase enzyme in fat cells. I don’t know about that but I know that it also influences the leanness that women seem to lose as they start to go to menopause.

Just to throw something in that I had no plans on discussing today, but I’ve been experimenting with progesterone. A lot of doctors think that progesterone is exclusively a female hormone when we talk about replacement, just the way they used to think that testosterone wasn’t something you want to replace in women. It was all about estrogen. Oh no, testosterone is a male hormone. We’re finding out that women need testosterone now. Men have always been relegated to being, “They’re less complex. Just give them testosterone and send them home.” The reality is that men need more than just testosterone. I’ve been experimenting with progesterone. I am seeing an increasingly better response in my results from training than I had before. I’m not a scientist, I don’t do anything in a way where I can actually say, “I did this and this is what happened.” But I have a suspicion that progesterone has some sort of anabolic response. Why I think that is because one of the things that people fail to realize is that the mother of all anabolic steroids that produce amazing strength gains and muscle gains is trenbolone, and trenbolone is a progestin.

Dr. Schoenfeld:  Yeah. I am not familiar with that research. I’ve not seen anything on anabolic types of progesterone but you may be right.

Carl:  You know what, there’s a lot that we still don’t know. But that’s not what we want to talk about now. I just want to throw that in there because I am experimenting with it. I’m seeing some changes in my body.

With that being said, women train just like men. They can see some of the same responses. Obviously, there a hormonal differences but is there any evidence that women have more Type I versus Type II as a result of the lack of high testosterone levels and the greatest strength seen in men, but maybe women have higher rate of endurance type of muscle fibers?

Dr. Schoenfeld:  Yeah. There are some fiber type specific differences and that is one of them. The actual size of the Type I fibers has been shown in some studies to be larger in women. How these innate inherent genetic differences affect training is still somewhat equivocal. Could that be a clue towards possibly wanting to train in a higher rep range? Perhaps.

Although fiber type specific training has been theorized and it does have a logical basis, but I’m not necessarily convinced there’s going to be all that great a difference over time if you’re training. Again, if you’re using proper hypertrophy training protocols because you want to tag all the fibers. It would depend upon how much the differences are. Statistically significant differences just mean it doesn’t happen by chance. I’ve not seen any research showing like women have 90% versus 10%. The differences are not all that stark from an absolute standpoint, so how that would play out from an actual training standpoint at this point I don’t think it really is that big an issue.

Carl:  All of your research is kind of a continuum in and of itself. So you’re constantly trying to expose the truths about building muscle and changing body composition from when you started to where you are today. Are you proving more of what you thought is accurate or are you starting to change and be challenged by the results of your research?

Dr. Schoenfeld:  I’m certainly starting to be challenged. Some of the things are proving things. When I say “proving,” they are leading to the at least conclusions that I would have had assumed. But many others, just like the study I talked about earlier, I never early on thought that there was any real benefit other than for de-loading to training with very high reps. De-loading as well as promoting some metabolic effects for lactate clearance, I would put in short cycles, but as far as from a hypertrophy standpoint I really saw no benefit to it and I’ve come really full circle as far as that goes.

Another study that I just published, which has caused me at least to rethink some of the training practices, it was really interesting and this will ruffle some bodybuilding feathers, but I looked at the typical growth split. It was a three-day week so basically it was chest, back, and abs one day, legs another day, and then shoulders and arms another day. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and that was one group. The other group did total body routine. So they did Monday total body, Wednesday total body, Friday total body.

The exercises, the number of exercises are exactly the same. Everything about the training protocol was exactly the same except how it was partitioned across the week. For instance, on the legs, for the thighs they did a squat, a leg press and a leg extension. While the total body routine did the squat, three sets of squat on Monday, three sets of leg press on Wednesday, three sets of leg extensions on Friday, and the growth split did the squat, leg press and leg extension all on Wednesday or whatever. It was done on different days.

Carl:  But they had a week before they hit it again another week.

Dr. Schoenfeld:  Correct. So they were training the muscle group once a week versus three times a week for the total body. The results show they benefit towards doing total body experience.

Carl:  That’s funny. Actually, it makes sense.

Dr. Schoenfeld:  Yeah. A couple things here. The time course of protein synthesis is roughly 48 hours so there at least is a logical basis for saying, “Every 48 hours you want to keep hitting that muscle again to up your protein synthetic response.” There is some other contradictory research showing the recuperative ability, so you can’t just look at protein synthesis, that there are other signaling factors and that wouldn’t necessarily continue over that time. Again, this was where the acute data – you have to look at it and then say, “Okay, that’s nice. How does this really fit in?”

But here’s the other rub. You talked about the novelty factor before. There were 19 total subjects in the study and 16 of the 19 were doing the growth split training each muscle one day a week. Could it just be that this was a new stimulus for them doing it three days a week and that upped their results? I can’t say. Again, it does give credence to saying, “Periodizing your frequency,” using again a manipulation of variables so that you’re continually getting novel responses, because that’s why the body adjusts.

Hypertrophy training – why is the body going to get bigger and stronger? Because it needs to do it from a survival standpoint, because there are some type of survival mechanism that the body wants to overcome so that it has a long-term survival, so your long-term ability to survive is enhanced. And if it keeps getting response, there really is no reason to adapt. That at least gives credence from a hypothetical standpoint. That’s something that does need to be studied.

Carl:  There’s something going around now and it was actually a sponsored post on Facebook recently about a guy who wrote an ad about – I don’t know if you’ve seen this already and maybe it’s so obscured and no one knows about it – but he’s talking about a training style that’s specifically designed to increase the strength of tendons. He calls it tendon strength training. I’m thinking, “Maybe I’m an idiot, maybe I just don’t get it. Do you really have to do special type of work just to keep your tendons catching up with the strength of the muscle?” I want to just touch on that. Are you cool with that when we come back?

Dr. Schoenfeld:  Yeah, of course.

Carl:  In the meantime, during the break, if you want to learn as much as you can about building muscle, there’s really one website to do it and it is so appropriately named Look Great Naked, because who doesn’t want to look great naked? Oh you? Okay. Well, you can stop listening now. But the rest of us, go to LookGreatNaked.com. We’ll be right back.

Part 3

Carl:  We’re talking with Dr. Brad Schoenfeld. His website is LookGreatNaked.com. It says it all right there. Who doesn’t want to look great naked? I’ll be 57 on Thursday and I still want to look great naked. That never goes away. People lie, “Oh no. I’m happy with my body.” Nah. You're really not. Let’s be honest. Everybody would like to look better and there’s one way to do it. You could find all the information at LookGreatNaked.com.

What do you think about this? There are so many scams out there, Brad. I know you have to get a good chuckle when you are on Facebook and you see some of these ads pop up for this nonsense, “How to add 10 pounds of muscle in two weeks.” It’s so sad that people fall for that pandering. Do you think there’s any real validity in training specifically to increase tendon strength?

Dr. Schoenfeld:  I know there’s no way that can be accomplished without… I mean you can’t separate that from training muscularly. But certainly when you train a muscle, you're going to also increase tendon strength. I know there’s no way that you can just focus on the tendon. I don’t know the specific routine that is employing that. I don’t like to speak about things when I don’t know what’s being suggested. There might be some electrical stimulation directly. I don’t know. Without knowing that, I can’t comment specifically. But I will say that I know there’s no way that you can specifically target tendons.

Carl:  Isolate the tendon without. One would think that even a novice like myself, we know that bone mineral uptake will increase and bones will get stronger in the face of muscles that are getting stronger. It’s part of the adaptation process. These muscles are getting stronger in order for the bones not to snap under the stress of what torque the muscle can produce. We need to get stronger (the bones meaning) and one would have to believe that soft tissue responds similarly. So as muscles get stronger, the tendons get stronger.

Now I will say this. That tendons being predominantly avascular, there is some evidence from research done on soft tissue injuries that it can take as long as a year for soft tissue to repair itself because of the avascular nature of it and so on, and there have been those brotelligent stories about the guy who was doing large amounts of anabolic steroid and his strength increased before his tendon strength increased – the snap biceps and quads and all that sort of stuff. Eliminating performance-enhancing drugs from the discussion and just looking at the way the body responds, I would believe that if your muscles get stronger, your tendons get stronger, your bones get stronger.    

Dr. Schoenfeld:  Correct. You did bring up the anabolic steroids. There is some evidence that that can have specific effects on muscle over tendon, which can leave the tendons at a greater risk for injury. But the question of normal training, yeah, you train your muscles and your tendons are going to increase their strength, as well.

Carl:  Connecting the dots for you, if someone said to me, “Brad, give me the Reader’s Digest version,” how should I train if I want the greatest increases in strength and the greatest increases in muscle hypertrophy at the same time, what would you say to them would be the training plan?

Dr. Schoenfeld:  I don’t think you train for both at the same time because training for maximum strength, you will get stronger as you get bigger for the most part and somewhat vice versa. But you're not necessarily going to maximize either because training for maximal hypertrophy requires much higher levels of volume, which if you're going to try to do that to maximize strength, you're going to really burn yourself out. They showed that in the previous studies that I actually talk with you about where we looked at a powerlifting versus a bodybuilding solid routine.

Really, you do have to separate them training for maximal strength. Those require that you're going to train with lower reps, higher loads, and lower volumes because of that. Whereas for hypertrophy, the goal is to, in general, to push volume specifically to try to functionally overreach where you're really pushing your volume high to a certain extent without going over. I look at it as going to the edge of a cliff without flowing over.

So you try to keep pushing your volume. If you keep training with very high volumes, you're going to openly end up over trained. And this is very individual. It’s kind of an individual process that needs to be managed over time. You need to understand your own limitations and your own abilities and then go from there. But whatever it is, you want to push yourself to this greater volume state. You want to train throughout a variety of repetition ranges.

Increase the frequency of training, to me, is a better way to maximize volume than to just have a very long marathon training session. Training let’s say going from three days a week to four days a week, and even up to six days a week is a good way to keep adding on more volume while keeping the level of what you're doing the same.

Within that there are just so many different ways to carry to go about this. And certainly, there are other factors to consider too like exercise selection, making sure that you're hitting muscle fibers from different angles. We can’t just give a cookie cutter prescription in an interview like this. This is where if you really want to maximize the hypertrophic response, you have to individualize it, you have to look at all these parameters, all the different variables and manipulating them over a period of time. You can get bigger.

I just had a debate in England with a certain individual who promotes doing HIT and very super slow training. My response is it doesn’t mean you can’t see any results from that. But is that going to maximize your response? No, it’s not. You need higher volumes. You're going to need to train certainly. If you just train with super slow weights, the weights are going to have to be substantially lighter and you're not going to have the same mechanical tension.

Again, these are some of the things where people say it works. Anything can work. Is that going to work best? Ultimately, what I study is what’s going to optimize results, what’s going to work best.         

Carl:  I want to ask you a question about frequency of block periodized programs. Do they have to be changed up every three months? Can you do them in the same training session or maybe in the same week? I think that would be a really good piece of advice for people out there because it’s clear – I often thought about making one of those. You know the wheel that you spin for a game? You snap it with your finger and the thing turns around?

Dr. Schoenfeld:  Yeah.

Carl:  I’ve often thought about making one of those wheels and putting different styles of training in it and then snapping it in the morning and going, “Okay, that’s how I’m going to train today.” Because if you want to truly leverage muscle confusion, the best way to do it is for you to not be even aware how you're going to train tomorrow until you show up in the gym. I’m wondering if it’s adequate to just change it up every day. Should you have to train a certain way for at least a week or so? Let’s talk about that frequency factor when we come back. 

Dr. Schoenfeld:  Okay. Terrific.

Part 4

Carl:  Welcome back to Super Human Radio.  We’re talking with Dr. Brad Schoenfeld. Before we talk about frequency for periodization, I just had another thought. If someone is going to do a whole body routine – and this is coming from somebody who tends to be an over doer and I probably have been in the over trained zone more often than I should – when you do a whole body routine, you do have to take into consideration that you're going to be hitting these muscles multiple times during the week. So you do have to back down somewhere a little bit, right? 

Dr. Schoenfeld:  When you say “back down” you're going to be doing a total body routine assuming you're doing it as prescribed taking the 48 hours rest. You're only going to be training three times a week. It depends how you're structuring it to see if you need to back down. I wouldn’t necessarily say that like anything. It just depends upon how you're going about the routine.

Carl:  No, I was assuming that I’m doing it five to six days a week. That answers the question right there. So you're doing it three days a week. So you're giving your body that recovery time that it needs before the next workout.

Dr. Schoenfeld:  Yeah. The thought is the reason that a split routine – here’s the other thing to further on that particular topic. The other thing to be taken into account – this is why I got to get back on the side of the Bros in the bodybuilding community – this doesn’t necessarily mean that a split routine is passé. What it’s saying is that if you're equating volume, there seems to be a benefit with greater frequency.

One of the benefits to doing a split routine is it allows you to train more frequently, so usually you're going to have to take off every other day if you're going to do a total body because you don’t want to train the same muscle group, at least theoretically, two days in a row. With a split routine, you could do let’s say an upper lower split or split in different ways and you could do a much greater volume within that week. There is at least credence showing – as we talked about before – that higher volumes of training lead to greater hypertrophic response. So the fact that you don’t necessarily need to equate volume does give credence to a potential benefit for a split routine.

Carl:  If not ignoring Type I and Type II fibers will yield the greatest both strength and hypertrophy of muscle, then the frequency of periodized training becomes a question. Do you really have to do these periodized training programs like they prescribed? A lot of them are like, “You do this for three months. You do that for three months.” Can you do it in shorter bouts or even within a single session and still see the benefits of stimulating both Type I and Type II fibers?

Dr. Schoenfeld:  First of all, there are multiple different models for periodization. A daily undulating periodization is a classic one. We’ll have a heavy day. Like Monday is heavy day, Wednesday is moderate day, and Friday is light day or some iteration of that. Yes, certainly there are different periodized models.

There’s no periodization. This is something that really needs to be understood. Periodization is a concept. Periodization is a means to promote a continued response to a given fitness goal without overtraining. It’s basically to keep progressing. How that’s carried out, we have hypothetical models that have been put into place but they are not to be-all end-all. There’s nothing that says that this model is the way to do it.

Basically, I like to use the analogy that training is a science and an art. The science tells you that we need to keep the body adapting without pushing it too far. That’s the classic general adaptation syndrome, which was first introduced by Selye many, many years ago. Within that context, the art of training means that, “Hey, we can propose different models but it’s up to the individual to find out ultimately what works best for them.”

When I carry out a research study, this is another thing that’s not well appreciated. It’s not like when I show that this group got 10% results and this group got 5%. So the group with the 10%, that’s a better way to go. But it doesn’t show you that these are averages and that some people in that 10% group might have gotten no results and other ones might have gotten 25% increases. What you have to take from that is that maybe the person who got nothing in that would’ve done better on a different routine. Responses are different based upon various genetic factors and lots of factors and other things.

We always need to take research in the context by which it is conducted and to understand that in evidence-based approach. If there’s something I can leave everyone with, it’s the importance of adopting this evidence-based approach, which is taking the body of research into account, understanding what the research says, but then taking into account your own personal experience as well as the individual needs and abilities of that lifter to create a program designed that will produce the greatest hypertrophy or whatever fitness component you're trying to bring about. You can’t just say, “Research shows this so this is what we’re going to do,” because research is not specific to the individual.

Carl:  What do you think the minimum response time before you assess whether something is working or isn’t working that you would feel is prudent? Most people don’t want to waste any time so they end up hopping from one thing to another too soon before they found out whether it was working or not. Are you a two-week guy? Like you try for two weeks and let’s look at it then.

Dr. Schoenfeld:  You have to define what “working” is. Sometimes you have to build toward something. It’s not like you necessarily see maximal responses immediately. The other thing you have to take into account is that when most people are trying to assess themselves, they're doing it in a very haphazard manner.

When I’m conducting a research study, I have an ultrasound that actually measures the thickness of muscle. Most people they look at themselves in the mirror and they're trying to determine whether it’s working or not, or going on the scale which can be a very inaccurate way to look at it, too. You have to make sure you're gauging it properly and I would say that generally a four-week period from a hypertrophy standpoint should be a minimum. You’re certainly not going to with conventional means, not see responses before that. If not, probably usually even a little longer before you actually start to see visual results.  

Carl:  What do you have going on in the future? Any upcoming lectures, any market visits? What’s going on with Brad Schoenfeld?

Dr. Schoenfeld:  A ton. I’m speaking this coming week actually in a few days at the ISSN (International Society Sports Nutrition) in Austin during their pre-con.

I’m speaking in Orlando for the NSCA at their national conference.

I’m speaking at the UK Strength and Conditioning Association in England in early August.

 Canfitpro later in August in Toronto.

Then I have the big three coming up in September and October which is a Norway conference, which should be really cool with a lot of other terrific speakers including Bret Contreras, Alan Aragon, Jacob Wilson, and some others.

Then Barcelona, Spain with my buddy, Bret Contreras, after that, and then finishing up in Brazil in October.

Lots of speaking engagements. Hopefully, people can come and check it out.

Carl:  Yeah. They can find all of your speaking engagements at the LookGreatNaked.com?

Dr. Schoenfeld:  That is correct. Also, please join me on Facebook or Twitter. I have a lot of good fitness information, as well as talking about where I’ll be.

Carl:  Then we can wrap it up. So you went to the UK for this. Have you done one of these point-counterpoint type of events? Before you were being challenged and you had to defend your position and your science.

Dr. Schoenfeld:  I have in a journal format. I actually did a point-counterpoint with Dr. John Ivy on protein timing in the Strength and Conditioning Journal several months ago. But that’s a different type of environment. This was the first actual formal debate that I’ve carried out in person in a lecture environment.

Carl:  How was it? I don’t care if one lost or made the best. That would unnerve me. If I knew I was going to have to stand in a podium and do a verbal joust thing with somebody, it would unnerve me. How did you feel about it?

Dr. Schoenfeld:  It was a great experience. It was interesting. The crowd was terrific. It was mostly fitness professionals and people high-level exercises so we go into a lot of real hard science. My opponent, Fred Hahn, was quite a gentleman.  

Carl:  So there was mutual respect between the two of you?

Dr. Schoenfeld:  Yeah. Certainly there was no acrimony in that respect. I had complete respect for Fred although I don’t agree with any of his positions and I think I produce science to show why they were amiss. He was a complete gentleman and I thought it went very well. The audience seemed to really benefit from it.

Carl:  We need more of that, quite frankly, for two reasons. One of the things that I like about scientific discourse is that it’s usually cordial, polite, and respectful. A lot of things that we think we know change over time. The people dig their heels in and go, “This is the only truth,” end up either having to defend that position forever and it becomes dogma instead of science or they have to swallow their pride and go, “Oops! I was wrong,” which I have a lot more respect for when they do that.

What you find on a lot of the Facebook posts is there is no cordial scientific discourse with respect for other people’s opinions. You're an a-hole, the name calling comes out, and it’s tough. So, I was curious about how this went over there. So this went really good. It was a good experience. You would do it again then?

Dr. Schoenfeld:  Absolutely. Social media can really get bogged down and name calling. I think a lot of times people feel very empowered behind the keyboard. They don’t have to face someone in person. That can be a real issue, too. Most people aren’t scientists. That’s some other thing. They have preconceived notions. Any good scientist is curious. They're skeptical and they're willing to change their position as I am. I’m always open to new ideas. Certainly, anyone who thinks they know it all needs to go back to the drawing board. They're certainly not a true scientist.

I thought this was great. I’m an educator so my life’s work is promoting the dissemination of knowledge and learning myself, as well. I thought that everyone there benefited. There was also another debate. There was supposed to be two but the other one was between Alan Aragon and Gary Taubes. That actually had some more acrimony. It was unfortunate that Gary Taubes did the interrupt quite frequently. My personal opinion is it was not quite as cordial as the debate that I had. But I still thought it was a very beneficial thing for the audience to see two different perspectives and people who are supposedly knowledgeable in their craft debating a topic with real evidence and not just saying, “This is my opinion because I do it.”  

Carl:  I didn’t even know that went on. Are there tapes of these that we could buy?

Dr. Schoenfeld:  I believe there will be, yes. Richard Lovatt was the one who had organized this event. It was a real terrific event, by the way. We had some terrific speakers. Layne Norton spoke. Bret Contreras spoke. A bunch of very high-level fitness pros presented, as well, not in a debate format but just a presentation. I believe that the seminars are being made available at some point in the near future through Richard. You can go to the Epic Fitness Summit and you can just go on Facebook. There is an Epic Fitness Summit Facebook page that you can look at and get more information.

Carl:  I’m going to pay you a compliment that you’ll probably understand but most people that aren’t from New York won’t understand, but I think that you're a stand up guy and I think that you're constantly providing us with great science that’s usable and actionable. I commend you for that.

Dr. Schoenfeld:  Thank you, Carl. It’s always a pleasure being on your show. I really appreciate you're giving me a forum to promote science-based material in hopefully a user-friendly manner.

Carl:  We’ll talk soon. Okay, Brad?

Dr. Schoenfeld:  Terrific, Carl.

Carl:  Take care.