In this episode of Iron Radio, hosts Coach Phil Stevens, Dr. Mike Nelson, Coach Jerell, and Dr. Lonnie Lowery discuss recent studies on the impact of cold water immersion on muscle protein synthesis and recovery. Dr. Nelson shares insights from a study published in March 2025, examining how post-exercise cooling affects blood flow and amino acid incorporation into muscle tissue. The team debates the pros and cons of cold water immersion, particularly for muscle hypertrophy and recovery, and shares personal experiences and practical applications. Later, they delve into the mind-muscle connection, exploring its use in both bodybuilding and strength training, and how to effectively incorporate this technique into workouts. The conversation wraps up with a discussion on posing in bodybuilding and how internal and external cues affect performance.
In this episode of Iron Radio, hosts Coach Phil Stevens, Dr. Mike Nelson, Coach Jerell, and Dr. Lonnie Lowery discuss recent studies on the impact of cold water immersion on muscle protein synthesis and recovery. Dr. Nelson shares insights from a study published in March 2025, examining how post-exercise cooling affects blood flow and amino acid incorporation into muscle tissue.
The team debates the pros and cons of cold water immersion, particularly for muscle hypertrophy and recovery, and shares personal experiences and practical applications. Later, they delve into the mind-muscle connection, exploring its use in both bodybuilding and strength training, and how to effectively incorporate this technique into workouts. The conversation wraps up with a discussion on posing in bodybuilding and how internal and external cues affect performance.
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Phil, Jerrell, Mike T, and Lonnie
Speaker: [00:00:00] What's going on? It's Dr. Mike T nelson here and you're listening to the Flex Diet Podcast. And today is something a little bit different. We've got a bonus episode for you. This is the full episode from Iron Radio. So as you may or may not know I'm one of the co-hosts of Iron Radio and have been for.
I don't know how long now. It's been quite some time. But I realized we've got a lot of new listeners here, which is awesome, and some of you may be interested in it. So in this episode, I put the full episode right after this. We talked about some of the new studies looking at one I talk about on the cold water immersion.
And then also get into some coaching aspects. Coaching for hypertrophy versus performance, internal versus external cues, and awesome to get the other guys on the show. Coach Phil Stevens [00:01:00] Dr. Lonnie Lowry. I've known both those guys now for God, probably almost coming up on over two decades for sure.
Might even be 25 years now, which is crazy. So enjoy this podcast here, and if you like Iron Radio, you can find it on the old iTunes under our Iron Radio podcast. It should pop up right away, and I usually have a note, a reminder going out in the newsletter on the weekly wrap up on Sunday. So without further ado, enjoy the Iron Radio episode here in its entirety.
Speaker 2: The rage, the gods forgot the secret of steel and loved on the battlefield, and we found it. Just amen.
Speaker 3: Good [00:02:00] morning everybody. Another episode, iron Radio. This is Phil Stevens here. I am a strength coach, powerlifter, highland games athlete, and uh, podcaster and I make a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 4: Nice. This is Dr. Mike Nelson, social professor of the Care Institute, creator of the Flex Diet Cert, which opens again June the 16th this year for one week, and still down here, kit boarding and working in South Padre, Texas.
Speaker 5: This is Coach Durrell out of Strength Build in kc. I'm a weightlifting coach, strength coach, and running an online program for introverts. Right.
Speaker 6: I like that, by the way. Uh, and this is Lonnie Lowry. I was a nutrition and exercise physiology professor for a long time, sort of semi-retired now, and a a former competitive bodybuilder.
Yes. All right. So we got some news, [00:03:00] uh, from Mike on Muscle Protein Synthesis Strength. This is news.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So people may have seen this one, but this was published ahead of print, uh, March 26th, 2025. This is a CSM journals. Post-exercise cooling, lowers skeletal muscle, microvascular perfusion, and blunt amino acid incorporation into muscle tissue.
And active young adults. Main author here is Milan nabe is a bunch of other authors people may know on here, such as Cal Fuchs. And this is from Luke Van Loon's lab over in, uh, Marick, uh, Netherlands. And if we look at some of the earlier stuff, I eat all the earlier studies to death and the physiologic flexibility cert, but there is a fair amount of data now showing.
I mean, people have [00:04:00] probably seen this online that, oh my gosh, if you do cold water immersion after training, it's gonna blunt all your gains and all the muscles gonna fall off your body. And this is a horrible idea and you should never do it. Um, and like all things online, there's, you know, sometimes there's some, some truth to that.
If you look at the previous studies, there is data showing that the muscle protein synthetic response, so just taking amino acids and stuffing them into muscle tissue, that is blunted by cold water immersion. I would say the caveats with that though, is. It was done, the cold water immersion and the other studies were done immediately after training, and most of those studies are for at least a minimum of 10 to 20 minutes at at least 50 degrees Fahrenheit, which a lot of people are probably not doing that exact thing.
They're probably not staying in there that long. There's also some other stuff online that this, uh, blunts inflammation and that's what's [00:05:00] actually inhibiting the muscle growth process. And when I reviewed all the literature on that, I can't find any data for that. Um, actually Luke Van News Lab did a really cool study and they looked at TNF Alpha, they looked at a bunch of other markers, basically no change with cold water immersion.
Um, but in this study, the theory of what's a little bit different about this study is. They're thinking that maybe it's being blunted because they're having simply just less blood flow to the muscle itself. So the purpose here, they said is cold water immersion lowers protein synthesis during post-exercise recovery.
Uh, whether this could be explained by lower microvascular perfusion and a subsequent decline in amino acid corporation is what they're primarily looking at. They took 12, uh, young males performed a single resistance exercise session, and they followed that by 20 minutes with one leg emerged in cold water.
Uh, which they used about eight degrees centigrade, which if my math is correct, [00:06:00] probably like 46 degrees Fahrenheit. And then they stuck the other leg in just thermal neutral water. So what's kind of cool about this design is that each person sort of serves as their own, uh, control, which is nice. And then after immersion, they gave 'em a beverage that had 20 grams of freeform amino acids that were labeled, and then 45 grams of carbohydrates.
And they did a microvascular perfusion of VAs lateralis, and they're looking by using. It's called contrast enhanced ultrasound at rest, and then also after exercise. It was a kind of a cool way we played with this when I was in the lab a little bit. I wasn't on any of those studies, but we call this kind of the Microbubble study.
It's a unique way to look at kind of microvascular uh, blood flow. Um. So what they found is they also did muscle biopsies collected from both legs. They pulled a bunch of bloods and so, so what they found was that the microvascular blood volume was lower in the [00:07:00] cold group and immediately following cold water immersion.
Um, if you read the full study, they didn't really see much change in, uh, blood velocity or anything else. Um, but they did see blood flow was significantly, uh, different and they found about a 30% difference in muscle protein synthesis in the cold versus the not cold plague. And they did a whole bunch of other markers and everything else there.
So their conclusion was that, you know, cold water, if you're using it for recovery, uh, does reduce muscle microvascular perfusion and does blunt some of the postprandial amino acid incorporation. So how well your body can then take these amino acids and stuff 'em into tissue. So, pretty cool study. Um, it looks like that it might be, the blood flow is the main thing for the reduction in that.
Um, the caveat though, I would say is that these are cool acute mechanistic studies, and they did really nice [00:08:00] controls. They did a lot of really nice stuff. We really need in this area is more chronic studies to see, okay, if you continue to do this after every exercise session over time, what do you find?
When I pulled some of those papers, um, one of them did show, uh, basically on my on biopsy. The cross-sectional area was a little bit smaller, and these are from different papers, but we don't know what that actually means in terms of your total gains. Another study used dexa and they did show that there wasn't quite as much, uh, lean body mass gain, but I would argue that that was well within the limits of what you could detect on dexa.
So yes, it was significant, but you know, probably still in the noise area. And then, uh, Greg Hoffen Australia did a study, I believe it was on, I think it was on rugby players, if I remember right, or it was Australian football. I can't quite remember. They did a nice chronic study where I think they did a, a warm control [00:09:00] placebo and then cold water, and they didn't show any change in muscle hypertrophy or at least lean body mass gains over the course of the study.
So, yeah, right now, I mean, I guess say if you're trying to absolutely maximize everything from muscle hypertrophy. Yeah. Hanging out in cold water for 10 to 20 minutes at 50 degrees or worse or colder after Right. Training. Probably not the best idea, but we don't know if you wait a couple hours or if you continue to do that, what exactly the effects are.
If you still like doing cold water immersion, which I actually like, you can do it before, or typically what I'll have people do is if you're doing some cardiovascular exercise in the morning. Uh, there is some mechanistic data about cold water might increase, uh, PGC one Alpha and some other, uh, molecular regulators.
So I just do it after doing, um, aerobic exercise or cardiovascular training in the morning is kind of be my recommendation.
Speaker 5: How do you [00:10:00] guys, and I don't know how much right now, but how do, how do you guys think people are normally using cold plunges? Like right now, I'm not talking about like in a controlled athlete level, but like.
Just the general population. That'd be my, I'm curious what you guys see in that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I can say typically, so what I recommended in the, the ER was people start at 50 degrees Fahrenheit. That may even be too cold for some people. Um, and then just start with a low amount of time. I, I like doing it not to the point where you're shivering some more of a eustress model, but just start at 30, you know, 30 to 60 seconds.
See how that goes. Once you can kind of comfortably get up to around five minutes, then I would have them drop the temperature, maybe 49, 48, kind of start that process over again. Um, I did talk to Dr. Thomas Seger. He's the guy who runs Roscoe Forge, uh, that'll be outta my own podcast. He likes people to get in cold enough [00:11:00] so that you do have a gas reflux, which obviously that temp is gonna vary for different people.
And, you know, stay in for around two to three minutes or so. And then get out. Most people what I've seen online, just my informal asking them what they're doing, most people are somewhere in the 40 degrees for like two to three minutes. I mean, that's, that's kind of what I see. Um, yeah, I think you do find a lot of people publishing videos of, you know, ice in the cold water, and.
I don't know, but when I've kind of asked those people, do you do that every day? Most of 'em are like, well, no. So, so
Speaker 5: that's kind of my experience. That was just my experience with it is like, and I don't even see people do it. I don't see a ton of people who do it after training, honestly. I see a lot of people who do it like in the morning or something like that.
Like that kind of thing. Yeah. I haven't [00:12:00] seen a ton of people who like use it as a part of their training modality. Versus they just, it's like something that's, you know, they think is good. So they like wake up and do it in the morning or just do it almost separately from working out or training in general.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's typically what I've seen. It's usually tends to show up more in their three hour morning routine that they do, or whatever the hell they're doing. Yeah.
Speaker 6: What's your tendency, Mike? Do you feel like you're defending cold water immersion here, or you're super neutral about it and it's just timing, you know?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I get, I get hate mail from everybody now because people are like, oh, you didn't say it was the greatest thing ever and it's gonna rip fat off your body and all these amazing benefits. And then other people are like, oh, but you said there might be some concern with muscle hypertrophy and. Pet peeve is like the internet.
Nobody reads full studies on [00:13:00] the internet and no one reads any of the details. Well, very, very few people. And so you'll have one thing posted that says, oh, cold water immersion's horrible for muscle hypertrophy. And then everyone's like, yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's bad. We hate it. And then you ask them like, well, have you ever done it?
And they're like, no, we hate it. It's stupid. Mm-hmm. Like, oh, okay. So you just use that to confirm your own bias? Like do you even primarily train for hypertrophy? Well, you know, kind of, you know, so, um, and with that and that even in that context, if you read the full studies, 'cause I've went forever to try to figure out, okay, so what does this mean to the average person listening?
So let's say hypothetically, you're an extreme responder for simple math. You can gain one pound to lean body mass per month, right? Which is probably not true and probably extreme. It just makes simple math. So that'd be 12 pounds a year, which is astronomically high. How much [00:14:00] by doing cold water immersion, if you follow it, the way the studies are written, you're getting in there immediately after for 10 to 20 minutes at at least 50 degrees or lower.
How much muscle mass is that costing you? Is that half a pound of that one pound? Is it a couple ounces? And I literally went through every piece of research I can find so far, and I still don't have an answer to that simple question. Um, so that's my pet peeve is that it probably, we know that it does impede muscle protein synthesis acutely.
But chronically do we see a rebound effect in a couple hours once blood flow is returned. And I always think back to all the studies that people are like, oh yeah, you have to absolutely have protein immediately after training. Mm-hmm. Look at all these huge increases in muscle protein synthesis. And those studies were true.
But then you looked at studies that looked at only the timing effect of protein and they're split. Some showed huge effect like the Paul crib study from Australia. Other studies did [00:15:00] not show a big effect. And then later we find out, oh, well if you just have enough protein during the day, you're, you're probably gonna be just fine.
And the timing isn't gonna be hyper crucial, at least for protein. So my gut feeling is that it's probably gonna end up more in that area. The acute effects are real. They're probably driven by blood flow, but in the grand scheme of things, is it gonna make. A massive difference. Even for hypertrophy. My, my gut feeling is no.
But we don't have many chronic studies that have looked at it, and the inflammation thing bothers me because I keep emailing all these people and I'm like, show me the study that showed where this blunted inflammation, and you can find them with. Uh, cold air. So if you go in like these cryo chambers, uh, some of those studies done in pathology is not healthy.
People. Those studies ironically did show changes in inflammation, but for cold water immersion, I can't find a single study that showed any [00:16:00] change in inflammation. Almost all of them so far that I've looked at. So no change,
Speaker 6: you know, my bias with this, I don't know how you guys feel, but. I, I can't imagine doing this enough to make a difference.
Like, it's too much of a hassle, to be honest.
Speaker 7: Mm-hmm.
Speaker 6: Um, like you talk about a three hour block, someone sits aside, I've got like, you know, 61 minutes and I'm, I'm gone. You know? Um, yeah. Or 45. So I just don't have the time. Although I will say this, my bias is that blood flow. Is a mechanism you've always gotta look at, you know?
Oh, sure. Like when I wrote that article that blew up because of the way TC titled it about, uh, spot reduction or whatever. It was just about go look at microcirculation, right? Yeah. Micro about a warm tissue versus not, you know, and it was just born out of this idea that. If you're doing your cardio on a treadmill and your love panels are ice cold, how can you have hot blood surgeon, you know, circulating through there?
So maybe, you know, for [00:17:00] fat fatty acid extraction, you know, and or in this case for muscle tissue and, you know, opening the vascular beds, because I think the average person may not realize that your, you know, your capillary beds are not wide open at rest. They're not always open. You read an anatomy book and it looks like they're just always there and working, and.
You know, no, a, a significant proportion is closed. So I guess it makes sense that if you pinched off some of that with cold, you know, you'd have less amino acids coming in. But yeah. How much of this is a research curiosity versus practical application? Because, I don't know, um, jumping in cold water after I, I lift, I'm, I'm just not gonna do that.
I know some people do, but I, I'm not gonna, yeah.
Speaker 5: I. I wonder how many people are dropping draft spots. 'cause they chose wrong this weekend. Like all the NFL draft stuff, it's like
Speaker 8: mm-hmm.
Speaker 5: If you chose the wrong one, you're doing cold water and now [00:18:00] you're, you're going in the fourth now instead of the first.
It's like, can't, like, I can't see a whole lot of that, but my issue with a lot of it as far as like the public conversation is just related to. No one's actually doing a, like, I would even say like a legit protocol, right? Like even if they, like, they sniffed around and they found a headline about, you know, cold immersion and training.
They usually don't even do that protocol to the letter. It's usually like, like I said, it's not even related to the training. It's like all the opinions that circulate around this outside of the scientific.
So wild in my guessing that, I mean, it doesn't even make sense. I mean, you see it in, you guys see it more in, uh, your practice than I would in mine, but the cold water thing has gotten so messy. It's like, I think part of it's like, I just wish people would take, you know, a year or two [00:19:00] off and then let it come back in a year or two with some new thing.
That will have a little bit more backing to it or a little bit more understanding to the practical application as opposed to, this study is great in that it shows that it's like kind of a, a marginal increase or a marginal difference as opposed to life, like life altering muscle gains or fat loss or whatever.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And this study was designed as a mechanistic study, which people have to. An acute study using, you know, tracers and, you know, pretty cool ways to measure blood flow. But it was not designed as a chronic study to see how much, you know, hypertrophy this is costing, you know, bicep, bi 79 on whatever.
Because you saw, I've already seen posts now of like, oh my god, 30% reduction in muscle protein synthesis. And I'm like, Raven, you know, texted like David Church and guys who do this research [00:20:00] all the time. It's like, yeah, that, that's significant. Like if you find that you're definitely gonna write it. It's definitely statistically significant.
But a one-off measurement of a 30% reduction that tells us mechanistically, something's going on. But when you extrapolate that into the chronic studies that have been done, and you know, like Nick Bird's done these two, Phillips lab has done a lot of these. It's, it's messy. Like you can't say that this one acute response is gonna make or break all your gains either.
It's, it's not that simple, unfortunately.
Speaker 6: Right. No, it's a good point. Mechanistic research is very important and it's real. We have to know what's going on in the human body and we're just trying to extrapolate, right? Like, yeah, does this matter when if you try to apply it? You know, even now, because to me it's almost sounds like what we talked about.
What was it last time about? How, uh, vegan diets they kind of come out in the wash given the course of a whole day or many days, like, is what you're talking about, although locally [00:21:00] in the quadriceps, it could cause some changes. Are there some benefits over the course of the day? You know, do you have a higher overall metabolic rate or, you know, just hemodynamics change in some way?
There's, you know, there's, it's hard to make these, um. Uh, practical applications, but the mechanistic stuff is important. So it, it, it's, it's a fascinating paper though. Uh, I, again, I think blood flow is something that needs to be, you know, looked at. I mean, if you, how are you gonna deliver or extract stuff from a tissue, uh, without at least considering that, you know, maybe this comes out where there's just some little.
Um, correction factor that you multiply when you do something, you know? Mm-hmm. If someone's someone's in an extreme temperature environment or, or something like that. I dunno.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I, the biggest thing I found, I mean, I, when I was home, especially after Covid, I had my cold water immersion, my converted freezer and everything set up, so I probably did at least six days a week for.
Probably [00:22:00] two and a half years, and I tried everything known to man every different way, and honestly, I, I didn't notice a huge difference in training or necessarily recovery. The two biggest things I noticed is after doing it, I felt really good for several hours afterwards, and there's some pretty cool studies looking at increase in dopamine, epinephrine, or epinephrine, et cetera.
Um, and the other part that surprised me is two and a half years in right before I would get in, and I still do this when I'm home, I didn't wanna do it this, I'm like, this sucks. I'm like, I would've thought, you know, after doing this almost every day for two and a half years in a row, but this would be just easy.
You wake up, you do your cardio, you get in. But even then, like there's still this, you know, few second pause, sometimes longer. Of, I don't wanna do this. This is stupid. Why am I doing this? Like your brain literally trying to talk you out of it, [00:23:00] because those first 20 to 30 seconds especially always just sucked.
Like that part, never that part never really got easier. And one last little experiment I did that I haven't written up yet is that. I did a test just on a rolling thunder for reps, and then because I had some tattoo work done on my left arm, I couldn't put my left arm in the, the cold water immersion for, for quite some time.
I think it was like four weeks actually, before I could put it in water. And so I did it, but I left my left arm. I'll put my right arm in. And so I thought, oh, this would be kind of a, you know, semi quasi experiment. And I didn't see any difference in right arm grip strength versus left arm grip strength at the end of that.
Now again, maybe, maybe it's not cold enough. Maybe I didn't have the arm in long enough. I'm only going on two to three minutes. Who knows? But, um, at least on an acute strength perspective on that little quasi study, I didn't see a huge difference.
Speaker 6: Alright, well I'll tell you what, uh, [00:24:00] let's go to break. We gotta keep these a little bit briefer.
Everybody just keep in mind moving forward, because Skype is pulling the rug out from under us that we're gonna be looking for other recording methods, uh, I guess podcasters anywhere who don't wanna, you know, pay or now looking around. I know Mike's been looking around for us. I appreciate that. But we'll be back and, uh, and Phil's gonna talk to us.
Uh, what are, what are we doing this week, Phil, again?
Speaker 3: The mind muscle connection, bodybuilders versus athletes. Now it's good.
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Please do a search within iTunes for that. Second Mike Nelson is handling the weekly syndication of the show, which should expand its reach through different social media channels. [00:25:00] The show will appear regularly through iTunes, Spotify, and most of your favorite podcasting sites. You may also want to check out the Iron Radio listener page on Facebook to see what's going on behind the scenes.
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We plan to continue to bring you the news banter and occasional guests. That it made the iron Radio listener base so loyal from the start, you are appreciated.
Speaker 4: What's going on? It's Dr. Mike T. Nelson here and wanted to let you know that I also have a free daily newsletter. So if you enjoy all the topics you hear on Iron Radio from performance, how to add [00:26:00] more muscle body composition and do it in a way without destroying your health in the process.
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Speaker 3: Okay everybody, we are back. And [00:27:00] what I wanted. Chew. The chew on today was, um, like the, the mind muscle connection and how it's used and the differences in a bodybuilding application. Something for physique versus, uh, something for strength athletes or athletes in general.
Performance, physical performance based stuff. V versus physical appearance based stuff. Um, 'cause I think they're used both. They're both used. You don't hear it talked about as much. In the strength athletic world. And I think that's because the, at the end game, uh, it's not used that much. It's more of a training modality than it is a, uh, means to an end, like in bodybuilding.
Um, because like Lonnie has talked about all the time, when you're going in that tissue assassin mode, like one of the big things is learning how to, uh, it's not as much the weight you're lifting, it's how you're lifting it and like. In the bodybuilding [00:28:00] stuff that I've done, and even like in our, uh, for my power athletes and things, in their assistance training, it's very much, um, you're, you're flexing against a weight more than you are lifting it.
Whereas in, in the athletics, it's like you're, you're trying to own a own, a own a weight and, you know, exert your dominance over that weight. Whereas in, in bodybuilding and things, it's like you're basically trying to flex against it and there's that mind different mind muscle connection. Um, I just wanted to flesh this out a bit and how, how and if you guys use it in the gym, um, compared to across the two different modalities.
Several different modalities, I guess. Um, yeah.
Speaker 6: You know, the first thing comes to mind is Tom Platz his whole mind and the muscle. That was his whole thing, you know? Yeah. I mean, I remember even after his competitive career doing crazy partial reps, like he was doing chin-ups. Mm-hmm. And he's just kind of bouncing in the bottom and the guy that's [00:29:00] spot him is probably thinking, when are you gonna stop?
Like mm-hmm. Brother has gone inside, right? He is all, you know, he's in his lats right now.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And I don't even know if he'd respond if you talked to him.
Speaker 3: So, I mean, I guess what got me thinking about this is I'm doing a lot of more, I have two days where I'm doing more of a, it's almost all assistance work type stuff.
Like I've been doing some leg curls and leg extensions and, and things like that, and it's actually really helping my knees, my old beat up knees. And I notice when I'm doing that, after several weeks of it, it's like, okay, I've really started like flexing against the leg extension machine. And not, not kicking it up.
You know, I'm not trying to, let's move this motherfucker. I'm trying to flex a muscle against it and it, it's tending to like, I'm using them better. I'm targeting that area. And it also I think, is helping my joints and things, um, in the meantime probably 'cause I'm slowing things down and getting more volume on there and things like that.
But, [00:30:00] uh. It's just two totally different things where I'd never, like, I am not taking a fricking 500 pound squat and be like, okay. Really flex your glutes. Right. You know? Right. But that said, there's a time and place for that. And that's what we were talking about before the show. Like, if I have athletes, strength athletes that, uh, have an issue, like a movement issue, like, man, your glutes aren't firing here.
Like, and Ed K has talked about this. It's really slowing the lift down. I. Um, you slow the lift down and you feel the thing, and you do have a mind and body connection then because you're trying to, basically what we're trying to do when we slow things down in training is build a map. Um, you, you're trying to build a map that your body will then follow and to build that map, uh, we have to go slowly.
If you, if we're trying to break an old tendency, uh, we can't do it at full speed. We have to slow things down and okay, this is the part of lift. Can you feel it? It's kicking into your glutes. You need to, [00:31:00] you know, fire hard and things like that. Um, like I said, in bodybuilding is kind of the end game.
You're, you're looking to then flex against that harder. What we're trying to do is build a new movement pattern by, by in strength athletics. Like, this is where things need to fire. This is where, you know, you really need to push those knees out, go up, you know, and we can't, if, if it's happening in, uh. A quarter of a second, a half a second.
It's hard to get that. So we slow things down to get, get people to learn this new thing. And then after 500 reps, a thousand reps or whatever, uh, we're, we're hoping that that's the new, the new automatic. So when they go fast, that just happens. Uh, so there's time and place for it. And that, like I said, I'm, I'm a big fan of it in, uh, our assistance work.
For, for power lifters and, and things like that. Because really what we're trying to do in assistance work is build tissue. Like, like we don't talk about it a lot. [00:32:00] Um, but power lifters need and wanna be big too, you know? And the more muscle you have, the uhhuh, the better it's gonna be. And that's where that type of stuff goes in.
And I think too many people in the power lifting world on their assistance work, they, they worry about weight and like making it their bitch too much. When they could get better work done, probably with less skeletal stress if they just, oh yeah, just use it for what? It's, it's assistance work.
Speaker 6: Build.
Fortress used to talk about that, like you could put two and a quarter on a bar. Yeah. Yeah. You know, maybe even less and get something out of it if you're pretty advanced. Yes. You know, and like from your perspective, like it's not gonna make you necessarily stronger, but it's gonna, you can walk away the next day and be like, God, I'm actually kind of sore.
Oh yeah. Like I've
Speaker 3: been doing rows lately and I've really lowered the weight and it's just, but I'm concentrating on doing it and doing it right instead of like, I can grab three 15 and fricking row it. Um, [00:33:00] but you know, I've dropped the 180 5, 200 and I'm, I'm rowing the weight, I'm feeling, I'm flexing, pulling my scapula back and, and the next day I'm like, oh shit, I'm sore, you know, from half the weight.
Uh, and it's realizing that's, that's really what we're trying to do and your assistance work is like just get tissue and also the benefit. And I think it's more as I get older, like. Man, I hurt less, you know, if I do, I'm doing less tendon and ligament damage. Mm-hmm. And things like that. So,
Speaker 6: um, I'm trying to think of the physiology, like what's actually different because it's undeniably true.
I mean, as far as what you can go experience yourself. I challenge any listener. Go use 30% less, hell use half. And then really do what Phil's talking about. Feel the stretch at the bottom of the movement. Squeeze extra hard at the top. Physiologically, you know, it might be more time under tension. Uh, it might be that you're actually getting more e mg activity in some of those, you know, stabilizing muscles or something that normally would just kind of [00:34:00] not engage to such an extent, you know what I mean?
'cause you're just kind of bouncing or throwing the weight a little bit more.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's also best in a, or whatever effort, as far as it relates to athletes. It's, it's really helpful when there's, if there's a movement problem. We need to slow things down and feel it. Be cognizant of where you're moving.
'cause a lot of people don't even know. They're like, you're doing this. Well, I don't feel it. Well, yeah, because you're going fast, you know, it's happening in the 16th of a second. Mm-hmm. So slow it down and see. Can you feel where you shift onto your toes now? Oh yeah. I do feel that. Of course they couldn't feel it before.
'cause the squat took 'em one second so that, that shift on the toes was an 18th of a second. But, uh, so in those situations when there was a movement. Problem or in a, a chronic injury problem, like meaning like put a definition on that. Like I'm dealing with a guy now we're going into month two after hip replacement, and he needed [00:35:00] hip replacement for like 10 years.
So I know as someone who went through that, you were walking and moving fucked up for the last 10 years. You know, you have built a whole new different way of moving, so I need to slow shit down and get lots of reps in slow moving how you should have been and how you can now again that you're out of pain.
Um, so, and that's where I'll use it a lot is like, okay, now feel this. Now make sure, and a big one for that is like, uh. Using that leg again. And that was a big one for me. I had to slow things down 'cause I defaulted to, 'cause it was so many years that I squatted everything and lifted everything right legged.
And if I went right back to moving fast, I would just do that and not Yeah. You were compensating. Yeah. Yeah. I, I just, it was just my default. My default was Okay, push hard and shipped over there. Yeah. Unconscious. And I had, so we need to bring. That unconscious back to, oh, I can use that leg [00:36:00] again. You know?
And so, and you have to make people feel like, uh, like basically like in that situation, it's like, feel like you're putting like 70% on that other leg because you're not, it just feels like you are. Um, and that's the same thing with people, like getting them onto their, like, I always push people onto their heels.
Like big time in a squat or something. 'cause they, everybody tends to be on their toes. Yeah. And what feels like they're way back on their heels if it's a beginner, is usually midfoot. Mm-hmm. It just feels like there's a lot back there because they're so used to living on the, uh, anterior side. So they're feeling
Speaker 4: the difference.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so like a, a small shift back. If we shift them back to baseline where they're supposed to be, it feels like they're way back and that's what we have to do. But, but like I said, and to, to do a change like that, you have to slow things down and be mental in your reps, and you have to have that [00:37:00] proprioception and mind body connection.
Now, I think the difference is, is like, that goes like bodybuilders live there. We use that as a tool that we hope to move away from. You know, uh,
Speaker 6: you know,
Speaker 3: Phil, it's a,
Speaker 6: and I, I wouldn't really wanna get Mike's thoughts on this whole neural reeducation thing, 'cause that's kind of one of his things here. But I never really, at least not for a while, have thought about this.
Like, bodybuilders rarely have the focus any further than their own limbs, like Mike was saying earlier. Like internal. Yeah. Whereas power lifters. Do is the focus, usually it's not any closer to you than the bar, right? Yeah, yeah. Like you're thinking about the weight and the bar and bodybuilders. I don't think most of them, their focus just isn't there, you know, their focus is in their pecs.
It's just, you know,
Speaker 8: yeah. Where my triceps
Speaker 6: or my pecs or my delts or whatever, and it doesn't even reach out that [00:38:00] far. It's like the, the focus is not even the same.
Speaker 3: And, but also I think it's also like you really hear that mind muscle connection and bodybuilders in small isolated moves. Yeah. Like it's really, it's a lot harder to be like, okay, you're doing a chin up, really flex those biceps, you know, on a big multi-joint move.
Mm-hmm. Whereas with a curl you can, um, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't at times. Uh, or you know, on a, honestly, on a case in the chin ups, it's probably teaching someone to flex their lats to use their fricking lats, which is a hard one to get. Like, yeah, that's a really hard one to get to people. And usually that's because they have no lats, like telling somebody with no lats.
Oh, totally. Like a beginner beginners. Okay. Flex your la What do you mean? Where are they? You know, I don't have them. You don't? I don't have any. Um, like I remember that I, it's like I can almost remember, I don't remember the day, but I remember when I like could feel my lats. It's like, oh, I know how to. I know [00:39:00] how to flex looks now and I can use that, you know, but you know, like benching Yeah.
All kinds of stuff. Yeah. Benching or deadlifting like, okay, flex lights, everybody, beginner's, like, what the fuck? I don't know. What do you mean? Where are those? Yeah. Um, so you have to have 'em is the tricky part to be able to flex 'em. But uh, but that's a case where I think we can use strength. Athletes can use some of that bodybuilding stuff.
Like, get an exercise where they can feel it, you know? Mm-hmm. And then they can gain that proprioception. Oh, okay. Now I know what it feels like to flex those legs, especially if they've gotten sore from it. It's like, oh, okay, I, I do that and that, oh, yeah, I'm sore there.
Speaker 6: No doubt. Isolation movements are probably a great.
Target for this kind of stuff, you know? Yeah. Like you can do a scot curls or concentration curls. I'm thinking about your biceps, for example. You know?
Speaker 3: Well, like when I'm doing leg extensions, it's just real easy to flex my quad,
Speaker 6: you know? Yeah. Leg extens, no other option.
Speaker 3: That's all that's working. Right.
But there is a difference. Like I can go in there and I can [00:40:00] do it as an event and probably knock out at the loads. I'm using 40, 50 reps. If I go in there with my. Fill smash tank mindset. Mm-hmm. Uh, or I can go in there and hit like 20 to 25 if I'm flexing my quad against the weight. Big difference. You know, and they light on fire and I'm walking funny when I stand up 'cause they're all ballooned up.
Uh, and that's what I'm going for right now. And like, and like I said, that's, that's helping with, of course muscle growth probably. But like what I'm going for, for is just. It's really aiding my orthopedic, like my knees don't hurt as much. And the only thing I can guess on that is just I'm slowing things down.
I'm getting time under tension. I'm, I'm getting tendon strength and integrity back.
Speaker 6: Mm-hmm. Uh, so more blood flow.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So, so what do you think, Mike, as far as the neural stuff here? Any thoughts?
Speaker 4: Uh, I. I've tried to [00:41:00] come up with an easier way of explaining this for like the last seven years, and I feel like I fail every time.
But I would say that the, the typical thing, which I think is mostly correct is, you know, power lifting. The goal is execution, lift, weight, right? Which is the literature, what we call more of a performance based model, which would be an external queue. Deadlift. Okay. Get the bar from the floor to lockout squat.
Take the bar off the rack all the way down to parallel, or whatever the rules are, or whatever you're doing all the way back up, you're giving someone the goal to move from point A to point B. Mm-hmm. Pretty much all the research I've seen, a lot of this is from Gabriel Wolf and other researchers, shows that for performance, external cues are far superior to an internal cue.
Internal cue would be. I want to feel the lat, you know, moving or working or whatever. Word associated bodybuilding, as you guys talked about, typically [00:42:00] is using internal cues because the gold is more muscle hypertrophy. We don't really care so much about performance. I guess my bias is kind of a hybrid of the two.
So if I'm working with someone who's more on the bodybuilding ish side of the equation. I will actually use primarily external cues, and then I'm going to ask them after they completed the lift, what did you feel? Mm-hmm. I still want the information that their body is providing, but my bias is, I think unless you're extremely advanced and have a lot, a lot of reps.
Focusing internally only. I think you're gonna compromise performance to some degree and therefore overload volume, et cetera. Things we know that are probably muscle growth. Now the caveat within that is if somebody says, Hey, uh, I'm not feeling my [00:43:00] lat on this pull up. Um, so I may do some other stuff beforehand to get better activation.
If that's still not working and they still can't feel it, instead of going to an internal queue, I'm still going to use an external queue, but I'm gonna modify the biomechanics and in general, I'm gonna put them in more of a isolation supportive thing like so Phil's example for squatting for quads versus leg extension.
If somebody can't really feel their quads much on a squat. You can make 'em more narrow. You can go to a front squad and you can go to a zercher. You can give them a different external cue if they still can't feel anything there after they've completed the lift, I'm just gonna put 'em in a more isolation thing I'm gonna take away.
I'm. Potential movement options. So they're gonna do a leg extension. Hey, guess what? You only have one place to go. Like there's, there is no other option.
Speaker 7: Yeah,
Speaker 4: I would [00:44:00] still cue them on an external cue. Okay. I want you to touch my hand here at the top, but I may play with tempo. I may play with speed, but I'm still queuing them on an external queue, but I would ask them afterwards.
Okay. What did you feel after? I don't really want them to still be feeling associated or seeking it during the movement. I view it as like hunger. Like you don't really have to ask yourself if you're hungry, like when you're hungry. Like hunger just sort of shows up and anyone who's lifted long enough realizes this too.
Like you just did a really good set and you're like, oh yeah, I could definitely feel that in my pecs afterwards. And last part, if I back up all the way back, I used to think that if I just came up with. The best cue or the best external cue or showing 'em how to do it or some type of instruction or tempo or longer centric that I would kind of fix all of their underlying programming issues with muscle recruitment.
[00:45:00] Now my bias is I'll just do old school, you know, from Kendall, manual muscle testing. Hey, you can't fill your lats. Cool. Let's just do a standing manual muscle test, which I know gets a lot of shit online. But all I'm looking at is can you get that muscle to contract what I feel like is a good contraction or not?
Just simple mid range. If you can't do that standing with no weight on you, I'm not convinced that any queuing is gonna make a huge difference in one session. I do think it matters over time. I do think you can get there with multiple reps and multiple exposures, but my bias now is, okay, what can I do Some technique.
It gets you to activate that lat just standing. My bias with that is RPR re reflective performance reset. I'll do some of that work for the lat, which is actually scraping the lat along the rib cage and then just retest them again. Oh wow. Okay. Yeah. I can feel the lat ract. Can you feel [00:46:00] that? Oh yeah. That feels a lot better.
Cool. Now we're gonna hold that position and we're gonna go do an exercise next. I'll do a different technique to get them to get better contractions first. Even now in a session, if someone comes over and they're working with a guy come over a while ago working on his deadlift, he watches deadlift. He is very quad focused.
He can't get behind the bar. Doesn't matter what cueing we use. Put him down on the table, test him like his glute max hamstrings, his lads, they're all asleep, not working at all. Mm-hmm. Do some techniques, get the leg glute working, get the lads working, get the hamstrings working, have him come back out, use the same weight.
I even gave him the, I didn't even give him any cues. I just said, okay, just, you know, dead lift. He is experienced lifter. His shins were almost vertical and his ass was way behind the bar. Same lift, same cuing. Now he can use his glute max, he can use his hamstrings. Guy calls back up the next day. Speed was way [00:47:00] better, felt better, looked easier.
RPR was less. Our RPE was less. Calls me the next day. He is like, oh my God, my gluten hamstrings are so sore from just deadlifting. Three 15 is crazy because he has better activation, so he is using them better. So I know it's very complicated, but that's. Biased.
Speaker 3: No. And I think you see that in advanced lifters.
Like, um, like there's numerous times I was at the gym and we'd be squatting heavyweight and like, I'm doing a set of five or something, I'd stop on three and everybody go, oh, everything's shifted here. I I can feel it in real time. Oh, totally. Make, make an adjustment. New people are like, well, I don't know what the fuck happened, what went wrong?
Yeah. And you know, and that's something, and that's where I think people need to, I. If, if, if I have a tip for strength-based athletes, it is like some of your training, likely your assistance work needs to be done with a mind body connection. Mind muscle connection. Mm-hmm. So you have the [00:48:00] vocabulary and I think they'll get more out of it.
Mm-hmm. Like drop the ego on your assistance lifts. Mm. And row drop your assistant and like, let's say you're doing dead lifts and then you're doing stiff legged dead lifts. Like you don't need to own the stiff legged deadlifts, right? Do the stiff legged deadlift. Do it with a purpose and your purpose not to make it your bitch.
It's to build tissue and like really concentrate on hamstrings and glutes.
Speaker 6: You know, when you're talking about advanced lifter lifters, Arnold used to say. He's like, you know, as an advanced guy at the time, like I can increase blood flow. Here's back to the blood flow topic, but. In a muscle just by thinking about it.
Yeah. That was one of his claims. Yeah. And I, I've never seen literature on that, but it's kind of what you're saying, like he's got the, that vocabulary it's certainly, I don't think gonna hurt, uh, to think about blood rushing into an area, uh, or something like that. Yeah. You know? Um, but yeah, 'cause he's got that vocabulary.
He is in tune o over many years of that mind muscle connection. [00:49:00] And there's a little bit of vocabulary there. I think people who think it's just philosophical nonsense. I, I don't think that's true either. It's like Mike was saying, the hard thing is, how do you describe that in real terms? You, you know, uh, to lifters who enjoy that.
I mean, Jarrell, you're, you're a mindful guy. Do you ever do the mind muscle thing on purpose, or is it just not something you focus on? I,
Speaker 5: I don't necessarily use that language, but I will say, so I have, I'll use the. We split squad as an example. So I had, I set standards on those where I'm like, all right, I want you to be able to do, you know, a third body weight in each hand for eight reps on each side as just as like a health thing, right?
For balance. But don't treat it like your, you know, squat.
It's really tough to get people to shift to that 'cause then they think, oh well I can just [00:50:00] grab the weight and, you know, do some usually really trashy looking reps. It's like I, when I look at the lift, like even if it's an assistance or, well, I was gonna say that if it's an assistance lift, I wanna look at you and see you owning that lift.
Like it should look in control, it should look smooth and like, I mean, I shouldn't see a ton of like, you should be able to suffer without all. Extra wobbling like you're about to fall over kind of thing. So what I see all, all the time it takes, I mean the people who train me, it takes probably a year plus to like actually get to this where you start to learn to like kind of cheat the assistance work.
Like you cheat on the assistance work, but you like go harder at the like main list, right? So in the assistance work, it's like you wanna try to find the lightest weight that gives you the effect. Mm-hmm. You don't want to find the heaviest weight that [00:51:00] gives you effect the opposite. You wanna make that the assistance work more difficult per exercise.
Mm-hmm. More difficult per rep. Mm-hmm. As opposed to with your main exercise, you wanna make that easier per lift. Right? Mm-hmm. We're putting you in the best mechanical position. To, you know, squat, deadlift for me, snatch clean and jerk squat, et cetera. I'm trying to put you in the best mechanical position.
Whereas with the assistance work, I wanna make it the most difficult, you know, without getting into all the possible nonsense, but as difficult as possible with the least amount of weight possible. And the weight should feel like it just kind of gradually comes up by like it's just too easy. So you have to.
Dumbbells or, you know, kettlebell or whatever. It's, so that's kind of how I, if I want a bunch of blood flow to a certain place where I feel like you guys use the lats as an [00:52:00] example, I, I usually use like bands for that in like a really, really high rep range. So you can like, so it's like eventually everything that is working that's not supposed to, is gonna fail and your lats will have to do something at some point.
And so that's how I kind of use this framework to, in my training practice.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. The external cues, like Mike was talking about, like if somebody's claiming like, I'm not using my lats on chins, well, quit pulling your chin to the bar and pull your sternum to the bar. You do that, and all of a sudden they're using their back, you know, but,
Speaker 4: or roll over another cue I get people is I even allow ems.
Most people, they put their thumb on top, it feels a little bit better, they get less bicep. Mm-hmm. And then pressure the outside of your pinky on the way up and drive your elbows into your waist. Mm-hmm. Right. So I'll tweak the external cue. Based on their feedback of, of what they're, what they're [00:53:00] doing, and then I'll ask them after, okay, what did you feel there again, that's my bias.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah. I wanna offer one last thing before we wrap up here. There is one parallel with bodybuilders. Instead of going so inside that they're literally thinking about inside their own body and it's, it's not really external in that you're not interacting with an external object, but. Posing is something you have to do to Phil's earlier point over and over burn in those motor patterns.
That's why people. If they're good, uh, they'll practice posing for, you know, two months before a show over and over and over. Because when you're doing transitions and everything else, I mean, in, in so far as there's even a performance aspect left in bodybuilding, it makes me weep. You know, that the great mm-hmm.
You know, uh, like Ed Corny or Frank Zane, or, uh, you know, these guys, they were masters, Leeta. That's the only parallel I can think of as far as something that's [00:54:00] you're meant to, the movement is the purpose and it's not literally inside your muscle fibers. Mm-hmm. You know, that's the only thing I can think of.
Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And I would argue even a lot of that, if you talk to opposing coaches, it is a internal thing where you're trying to feel that muscle. But the really good posing coaches I've worked with, with clients. They'll tweak slight arm position rotation, not only to have it display better. But to get the lads to spread more, they're actually using a lot of external cues to accomplish that a lot of times too.
Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I guess that was my point. Like it's an external display, right? Right. And it's not just like, how can I bounce my, in the bottom of the chin? Yeah. Or something, or, you know, feel that stretch at the bottom of a, of a, a preacher curl or something like that. Yeah. You know, because Yeah, to Phil's point, you do have to go no mind when you're on stage.
You what? If you do? You know, it's like, [00:55:00] walk out onto the stage, okay, cue the music. Time to go. And if you're thinking about every little muscle, you're fucked. You, you need to, you know, know what, look what already earlier with a coach or whatever. A mirror, a camera. Yeah. What looks good, what does not look good for you?
And you're not, just because I've made that mistake earlier in my career too. I was trying to, you know, adjust and feel it when I was posing on stage. I'm like, that was stupid. Don't do that anymore. Just go be smooth and follow, you know, the neural pattern that you have laid down for weeks or months. But again, you know, it makes me sad because I don't even know how much posing even freaking matters anymore.
Speaker 8: All right.
Speaker 6: Alright,
Speaker 3: well that's it for this week. We will catch everybody and we'll be on a new system, so hopefully it works out next week.
Speaker 6: So Yeah, hopefully listeners won't even know the difference, so, okay.
Speaker 3: Okay guys.[00:56:00]
Speaker 2: The Iron Radio podcast and all of the audio on iron radio.org is for informational purposes only. If you're interested in starting a diet or exercise program, it's important to check with your physician, also seek the help of registered dieticians, athletic trainers, and qualified exercise physiologists in order to make the.