On this episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, I’m joined by Dr. Antonella Schwarz to geek out over her recent study on myo-reps, which she presented at the International Society of Sports Nutrition. We break down what myo-reps are, where the concept came from, and how they stack up against more traditional hypertrophy protocols. Sponsors: Tecton Life Ketone drink! https://tectonlife.com/ DRMIKE to save 20% LMNT electrolyte drink mix: miketnelsonlmnt.com We also dive into some broader topics, including muscle growth principles, physical therapy applications, injury recovery strategies, and how to train efficiently when time is tight. Dr. Schwarz shares how she uses myo-reps in her own training and why performance-based goals are such a big deal. Plus, she gives us a sneak peek at her upcoming research. If you’re a coach, trainer, or just a curious nerd like me, you’ll get a ton out of this one. Enjoy!
On this episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, I’m joined by Dr. Antonella Schwarz to geek out over her recent study on myo-reps, which she presented at the International Society of Sports Nutrition. We break down what myo-reps are, where the concept came from, and how they stack up against more traditional hypertrophy protocols.
We also dive into some broader topics, including muscle growth principles, physical therapy applications, injury recovery strategies, and how to train efficiently when time is tight. Dr. Schwarz shares how she uses myo-reps in her own training and why performance-based goals are such a big deal. Plus, she gives us a sneak peek at her upcoming research
If you’re a coach, trainer, or just a curious nerd like me, you’ll get a ton out of this one. Enjoy!
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Mike T Nelson. On this podcast, we talk about all things to increase muscle performance, improve body composition, do all of it in a flexible framework without destroying your health. Today in the podcast we have Dr. Antonella Schwarz and we are talking all about her brand new study she did, which was presented at the International Society of Sports Nutrition.
In Florida that I was recently at about myo reps. So if you've not heard of myo reps, we'll explain all about it, what it is, and we'll find out if it is a way of training to save time, or eh, is it just another training technique that maybe not that effective? We should just kind of go back to some basic stuff.
So she just study looking at it, which is great. We also talk about. Just muscle in general, uh, [00:01:00] hypertrophy training. What are some principles you should follow in training the role of, uh, physical therapy, even injury recovery, and a whole lot of other great stuff. So, uh, she is an assistant professor of exercise Science at Bayer University in Miami, specializing in skeletal muscle physiology and, uh, strength training.
And so it's great to have someone who has her background, who is also from the practical side and the academic side, uh, investigating what are new trends or things that have been around for a while. Is there any science to support 'em and what can we learn from it? So I think you will enjoy this podcast.
Make sure to check her out. Uh, best place to find her is on the Instagram, and we'll put a link, uh, to that down below. And the sponsors of today's podcast, we've got some tasty electrolytes from our friends over at [00:02:00] LMNT, so you can check out the link down below. And then we also have Ketone EERs from our friends over at Teton at Ketone EERs, which I've used yesterday before my training session.
And even though I went kiteboarding the day before for three sessions, which was great, I still made it through my. My lower body leg session which was good. So, uh, check them out below. Uh, full disclosure, uh, I do help them on various projects and I'm an ambassador, uh, for them, so use the code, but you can save some money there also.
And if you want more information on all the stuff I've got going on, in addition to a ton of great info we've got coming out, make sure to hop onto the newsletter, which is free, and I'll even give you a cool free gift. So go to the link here down below. We have the flexible meet head cardio level two coming out.
Uh, the date for that got pushed to [00:03:00] around August 11th now, just because of all the stuff I have going on and was in Europe, helping some athletes over there. So, uh, look for that coming out. The newsletter will be the best place to get all of the information on that. And then depending on when you listen to this, I'm also most likely doing a online mentorship again.
Uh, it's been about two years since I ran it and it's composed of how to program exercise online how to create and write newsletters and get clients in an online environment that is getting increasingly more crowded. Uh, news slash we will show you how to write or we can do videos, but it's mainly designed mostly for writing.
So if you have no desire to write at all, then well, this course isn't for you. But if you wanna learn how to write in a very short period of time, I think you'll find this super useful. I will be adding some stuff with AI on it. But the [00:04:00] primary gist of it is showing you how to write from scratch.
'cause I don't think. That process is ever gonna go away to zero. We'll also talk about some mindset stuff and personal development. So if you're interested in that, uh, drop me a note. ASAP 'cause it'll probably close pretty soon. I think we'll probably have enough people to get it to go. So if you are interested in that, drop me a note or just hit reply to the newsletter.
So enjoy this podcast here with Dr. Schwarz.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Good afternoon. How are you today, doc?
Speaker 2: I'm doing great. How are you?
Dr Mike T Nelson: Good. And we met at the ISSN uh, conference, and you gave a great talk there on the concept of myo reps which I thought was super interesting. What made you dis discuss a lifting technique in a study?
What, how did you come up with the idea? Or maybe just something like I do where you're like, [00:05:00] oh. A certain technique. I'm like, oh, what if there's any literature on this? And you look and Oh yeah, there isn't any literature on this.
Speaker 2: Yep. That's exactly how we came up with it. I have to give credit to where credit's due to my advisor Dr.
Travis, he is very involved in like the pile lifting world. My background is more so in the bodybuilding world or like my personal background, I should say. I'm familiar with all the barbell sports and whatnot, but my experience is more so in the bodybuilding world and his experience is very much in power lifting.
And when we got to chatting about, you know, dissertation time and what could that look like he bought, brought up the training technique, my reps and was like, Hey, there's really nothing on this. This could be a cool avenue to explore. Just kind of put something out there, put some literature out there about it, because a lot of the training techniques do have.
Some form of paper and potential like validation, but there's nothing on my rep. So when you look it up nothing pops up. So that was really our goal is just like put some info out there on it.
Dr Mike T Nelson: [00:06:00] Cool. And what is Dr. Travis's last name so I can make notes here?
Speaker 2: That's, uh, Kyle. His first name is Kyle.
Last name Travis.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Oh, it is last name Travis. Oh, okay. Yeah. Got it. Awesome.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Dr Mike T Nelson: And well first off a two part question.
What exactly is the definition of a mile rep? And then I'll ask about where did it kind of come from.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So it is basically a derivative of rest pause, if you're familiar with rest pause.
With this kind of like pre exhaustion component. Rest P does chase failure. My reps does not, my reps kind of prides itself in that, like in being that one to two RIR where you're not, you know, training to failure each time or each set. In comparison to respa. So that's kind of how it sells itself.
And RR is
Dr Mike T Nelson: reps and reserve.
Speaker 2: Yep. Reps and reserve. So that's kinda the cool part about my reps. Basically it's kind of hard to come up with a definition 'cause there's nothing out there. And so we tr that's kind of some of the feedback we've gotten on the paper. Like, Hey, you need to kind of [00:07:00] cite this.
I'm like, there's nothing to say. But basically it is just kind of leveraging rest intervals and giving you this like pre-ex exhaustion component in hopes to eliminate like the junk volume, which I don't love that term, but I think it's easy to conceptualize maybe like what you're trying to achieve with my reps.
Because if not, then it's just you're like, okay, well it's just like everything else and it is like everything else. There's nothing inherently special about it. You're just really cutting down on time. So how you would complete it is you do this activation set. With a moderate weight nothing crazy, maybe like 60 ish, 70% of your one rm.
And you take it to near failure, right? That one to two RIR and usually that looks anywhere between 10 to like 20 reps. And then you'd rest about five breaths anywhere between like five to 30 seconds. A lot of autoregulation involved. And then you pick up that same weight and you do that same exercise with [00:08:00] for a maximum of five reps.
So you're trying to get between three to five reps with that minimal rest. And then you take that same short rest again and you complete three to five more reps same short rest until you're desired number of reps that you've like prescribed for that specific exercise. So really similar to rest pause, just slightly different.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And what would be the, I guess the rest pause way of doing it? Because to me it,
Speaker 2: yeah, it kind of
Dr Mike T Nelson: sounds like rest pause, but maybe there's some differentiation that I'm missing somewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the rest pause, you're chasing failure, so you're trying to get to failure with each. Ah,
Dr Mike T Nelson: so this is, you're doing one to two RER each time?
Yeah. You do it. Is that right?
Speaker 2: Yep, exactly. Okay. So you're not necessarily going to failure. So the, my rep thing is Hey, we are I guess the theory behind it is kind of like this fatigue dissipation, like it's advantageous because you're not creating so much fatigue, therefore great at recovery.
However, some of the stuff out there is not so solid. So I really wouldn't, [00:09:00] I wouldn't, uh, kind of stick my flagpole on that one just yet.
Dr Mike T Nelson: And the weight is the same weight you would do Yeah. For all of it then, is that correct? Yep.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Dr Mike T Nelson: All of it. Yep.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Got it.
And who is kind of, sort of the pioneer of myo reps?
There's usually some, yeah. Interesting character behind all these training methods.
Speaker 2: Yes. A Norwegian man by the name of, I'm gonna butcher it, but Borg, or Borg for Girly. Yep. He's kind of, yep. He's the guy who's term, uh, coined the term and lots of cool anecdotal evidence for it. He uses a lot with clients, a lot of bodybuilders use it, A lot of like speculative like mechanism kind of stuff out there, but nothing concrete.
And, uh, we are just kind of hoping to kind of put something out there that makes it more concrete. But basically what we've found and what we've talked to other people who have also explored my reps in the science research world is that they're awesome because they can really help you cut back on time, [00:10:00] but there's nothing really inherently special.
We really don't know yet. At least we can't say like, Hey, they're special because X, Y, z. There just is really no mechanism to support any of that yet. So.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, that was my other question of what would be the main, I guess, proposed mechanism or benefit of it as opposed to just doing another set.
Speaker 2: Yeah, your traditional, uh, resistance training.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think some of the proposed mechanisms are, I'm sure you've heard of effective reps while Yeah. Not super supported. Yeah. So basically just kind of reaching this level of excitement, uh, skeletal muscle, excitement, fatigue, uh, not fatigue, uh, like metabolic stress where that's where the gains are made, right?
Like those are like the magic reps. Those are the effective reps. So in a set of 10, like your first five are just to get you there. And then your last five are those effective reps, which I don't necessarily believe in that. And there's not a lot of [00:11:00] support for the effective reps. Like we once maybe thought or speculated, but that's kind of.
Where the, my, I always feel like that argument. Yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Philosophically, if I have enough beers, I could almost get my head around. But Yeah, exactly. Mechanistically wise, I'm like, so there's something, it's not fatigue. Something's off. There's something else in the muscle that, like rep four Nope. But rep five.
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Agreed. Agreed. There's no, like, I definitely am not gonna die by that at all, and there's no way that Right. Like, oh, from four to five something magic happens. Yeah. Yeah. So I definitely don't believe in that. Of course. I think there's some merit to the idea of like, obviously I like the idea accumulation.
Yeah. Like accumulation of stress. I believe that. Sure. But I don't think there's a magic number at all. 'cause that'd be kind of crazy.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. To me that's just, it sounds like people trying to coin a term around Yeah. What I would say is just more high quality work.
Yep. I agree. Which again, even
that when you've, you fall into the hypertrophy literature gets.[00:12:00]
Really messy because what is more effective? I mean, we can't even agree. Yeah. Do you go to failure? Do you not go to failure? Like it just seems like there's so much agree, disagreement and they all have their own kind of data behind them too, I think, but
Speaker 2: yeah. Yeah. And there's just a lot of nuance and you can't really cover it all.
And I feel like as much as we want to think that we know a ton about hypertropia, I really do think it's still in like the field itself or like this, the approach to study is still in its infancy. And I mean, there's so much more to know and discover and yeah, I always say like, I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel, just add a spoke.
This is just an extra, like a cool little tool to have in your back pocket. Nothing magical about it. No crazy mechanisms here. Just if you're short on time, here's how you can kind of crunch your volume and still see similar gains as your traditional method. That might take you more time. So that's all.
It's, yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson: And we'll get into the study you did, but
Speaker 2: yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Do you. Do you think you have to go to failure? Let's say our [00:13:00] goal is,
yeah, a hundred
percent hypertrophy. We don't care about performance. We're only focused on hypertrophy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Do you think you have to go to failure?
Speaker 2: I love that question. Because it's loaded, like there's so much want.
Oh, it's totally
Dr Mike T Nelson: loaded.
Speaker 2: It's such a loaded question. I love it though. I love that question. Overall I would say no. Like no, because if you're thinking long, like long term and, you know, making these gains and adaptations and increasing size over time not just looking at it acutely, oh sorry, I exited out the page.
Not just looking at it acutely. You just physically can't recover from that many training sessions a week, taking everything to failure. So that's kind of where you get lost in that failure volume world. While yes, you could probably induce the most, uh, like damage, tension, stress. By going to failure. It's just not conducive to long-term gains.
And so you can't just like look at it [00:14:00] from an acute point of view. You have to look at it as, okay, if I want to gain mass over the course of a year, I need to be able to get to the gym and get enough volume and get enough training sessions. So I have to recover in between. And if you're taking everything to failure, you just won't.
And so you won't ultimately get enough training sessions, enough volume to build the math. So I'm a double-edged sword. But no, I don't think you have to go to failure and I don't think you really should always go to failure if your turn, your long-term goal is to grow as large as possible. However, I do think that an occasion you have to go to failure.
And I do think that training to failure teaches you. How to appropriately not train to failure. Because if you never train to failure, you don't really know what one to two RIR feels like, and you might be hanging out in four to five R four to five RI without even knowing it. Therefore, you know, not really [00:15:00] maximizing hypertrophy training.
So yeah, that's kind of the long-winded answer. Yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And I think even in bodybuilding drugs aside, like you'll find people, yeah. Like Mike Menzer who was obviously influenced by Arthur Jones, who was very much, you know, only kind of the one set to failure type thing, although, most of his stuff was just more of a, I'd say a logical philosophical argument more than anything else.
And you've got people like Dorian Yates who are kind of in between, who, if you look at a lot of his training, he did do a fair amount of warmup sets. So he did do, in my opinion, yeah, a fair amount of volume, but did do as much volume as, you know, Arnold or Jay Cutler or people like that. No, but all of them, you could argue were extremely successful using what is apparently different training methods and philosophies too.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep. That's the thing is even if we did find in a study the one perfect anomaly, the magical new [00:16:00] mechanism, then the, like, the cl, the, how do I say this, the actual like transfer from the paper and the experiment to everybody as an individual, it just isn't always gonna work. Right? So like what one, what works for one person?
I wish it would work for everybody, but it doesn't always. And so I think that's why like you get caught up on like these philosophies and who's right, who's wrong? Well, it's really not that simple because Right. If something works for a group of people, but it doesn't work for the others, we don't always know why.
And I don't know if we ever will. So
Dr Mike T Nelson: yeah I probably told this in the podcast before, but. I remember seeing Steve Phillips present at, it was a CSM in God, this might have been 2008 or something like that. And he put up a plot of a study, I think it was one of the first studies they looked at for hypertrophy.
There was a chronic study. And he put up a scatter plot of all the data and showed the line that, you know, these people gained, I can't remember how much, you know, pounds of lean body [00:17:00] mass and you're looking at it, and most of the people are here. There's two dots, like probably two standard deviations above.
And there's one guy who technically lost muscle mass or lean body mass, I should say, during the study. And I don't remember if it was myself or someone asked him about it and he's like, yep, it looks like one person is probably measurement error. I don't think they got worse, but they definitely, clearly were well below the other people.
Yeah. And I said, well, what about like those two people way at the top who we called the beef brothers, who I guess grew up on a farm. They were, uh, brothers and this was not a nutritional controlled study. It was mainly just a training study. And they clearly seemed to be like hyper responders. And I think,
yeah,
that's what have, uh, I think it was Dan West who later did the research on testosterone responses to training and stuff.
The theory at that time was maybe these people are hyper responds to the hormonal output from training. Turns out that doesn't really appear to be a thing, at least in, you know, non [00:18:00] exogenous hormonal use. But even then, it's always interesting how I think the future is trying to figure out, like you said, per individual, what does that individual need?
Because if you've worked with people long enough, like I've worked with people who definitely do better on that, more higher intensity, lower volume. I would say anecdotally, they're not the norm. I tend to be more of the let's push volume type thing. Let's not, you know, train to failure all the time. But do you think there's individual differences?
And if there is there any way to really know like what end the spectrum you may lean more towards?
Speaker 2: Right. I definitely think there's individual differences. And I wish I had the answer to how or why or how, no, you know, I have no idea.
Dr Mike T Nelson: So
Speaker 2: I have no idea. Yeah, same. I have no idea. And I'm still such a newbie in the field and it definitely intrigues me.
And that's a question that I always think about. Like, why are there such like large differences between, you know, individuals when they're doing the same thing and everything's so controlled. [00:19:00] I wish I had the answer to that, but I don't. But I think that's also what makes at least currently coaching and working with humans in the clinical population as well as just with gen pop like such an art and sure, we have all these paper, I mean these, uh, answers on paper and in research and in articles, and of course we should be informing our practice with evidence, but there's also an art to it and, you know, knowing when to use what and how much and where, when, why with the proper individual.
I think that's what kind of makes, like, it separates like good and great coaches because we all have access to the same like information and guidelines and whatnot, but how it gets applied and how it might work for one individual or the other is kind of up to the coach, their discretion, their knowledge and whatnot.
So yeah, I think that's kind of the fun part about the world that we're in is it kind of makes it. It separates the good and the great, and I think it's great for now and maybe one day we'll have all the answers and protocols specific for people, and it'll be easy. [00:20:00] But I think that would take like the human nature out of it.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. It seems like there's also kind of a, the coaching world, the cult of personality where you've got still the Arthur Jones kind of diehards, you know, one set to failure. You've got Yeah. More of the volume based people, and I'm sure that maybe subconsciously each of those groups sort of attracts the group that maybe would respond better or at least might be more enjoyable to that area.
So you're really kind of working with a biased group of people, which,
yeah.
And if you're running a business and you can get results for people doing that, like, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. But it's also then hard to say my way is to be all end all when you're working with a very.
Probably biased population to start with.
Speaker 2: Totally. Which is why I think that all researchers and coaches need to remember that. Like they need to remember that there is a lot of nuance, and I was just talking to Dr. Dusa today about this, like he posted a video, like [00:21:00] we get stuck in like these echo chambers when we Oh yeah.
You know, study this specific population in this specific way of training or lifting and gaining and losing and like, it's just so like one sided sometimes and we forget that, you know, like it's not black and white. It's, I mean, it's such a spectrum. So I agree. I think that every coach just 'cause it works for you and your population.
That doesn't mean it's the one way, right? Because then you get stuck in that echo chamber. And to like realize that like yeah, it's like this could be a bias population, this could be specifically because of who I've attracted and whatnot. So yeah, I think that's a great point.
Dr Mike T Nelson: And I think there's so much that's unknown.
I remember having this conversation at, was it A CSM? Or maybe it was even ISSN, like maybe five years ago with, uh, Dr. Lane Norton and Dr. Mike Roberts, who Mike will be back on the podcast again. Ask them and like, do you know exactly like how hypertrophy even happens? You know, we had this long discussion about, [00:22:00] uh, my nuclear domain and a bunch of other, it was a great discussion and at the end I remember Mike just kind of saying, he is like, I don't know exactly for sure, man.
I know he gave
the best talk, the top researchers in the world on it. He was like, yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, he gave such an incredible talk this past ISSN and yeah, that was really like the premise of it all. Like. I mean, look at all this awesome, like, look at all this awesome data and like look at everything that we know, but it is just a drop in the ocean of what we don't know.
And I mean, I think that is such a great perspective to have. And you know, if you get stuck on the one thing that you do know, or like the little bit that you know, then you kind of neglect the rest and it's such a missed opportunity. So yeah, I, I love that kinda like humble approach. Like res you have to like have like a healthy respect for the science.
It's kinda like the ocean. Like you have to have this like healthy respect for the ocean. 'cause we don't know right? Like what's 99% of it. And that's kind of how I feel about, it's got a muscle research. [00:23:00]
Dr Mike T Nelson: Well do you think about my little pet theory? And I don't, I can't claim to be the person who came up with this.
I probably stole it from somebody and if I'd stole it from you, like please let me know. But we've got a pretty good idea if you wanna what to do to train to get stronger. But we have a last idea of hypertrophy. My pet theory is that. Hypertrophy is more like a, an air quote side effect than it is like the main thing.
It feels to me like at some point the muscle's like, Hey, we just can't get any stronger or we're gonna have some integrity issues, and so we just have to get a little bit bigger because this crazy Yahoo keeps doing this type of stress to us all the time. Love that. What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2: I love that.
No, I definitely see that. I like to think of like strength and hypertrophy working in unison, kind of like a Valley hill. Valley hill. Like you really, like, you have to focus on one to get up to the next one. Then you gotta like focus on the other one to get back up to the next one, especially as a strength [00:24:00] athlete.
I think maybe less as a hypertrophy athlete. So yeah, I do think that's a cool theory. And I think that there's some merit to that. I mean, that's how I think of it. Kind of like a rolling hill, like you need one to get to the other, you need it again to get back to the other. And so, I do think they were kind of hand in hand like that.
And like, you eventually strength is like, hey, yeah, we do need to get a little bigger. If you wanna move up to the next, you know, the next step. And then you kind of play on hypertrophy a little and then you can go back to like your big strength goals. And so I agree and that's kind of like why my reps has been also has infiltrated the power lifting world because they, you can use it not just on machines or just specific to bodybuilding.
You can use it for strength as well because you are keeping, I mean, volume relatively low compared to your traditional hypertrophy training. However. We'll talk about this in a little bit. In my study, we equated the volume, but you don't always have to equate the volume. Dr. De Tampa did their papers interview right now, but they didn't equate the volume.
And so you can kind of, and they got [00:25:00] similar results. And so you can kind of see how a powerlifter would be inclined to use bio reps instead of traditional hypertrophy for like that strength hypertrophy phase just because of less volume. So, yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And I agree like strength and hypertrophy are definitely matching.
Like I think of the example of like Kendrick Ferris when he was competing for Olympic weightlifting. I always think of like weight class sports because something that's in a class that's televised, it is a wake class sport. Like it's very easy to verify numbers, right? You don't have to go like, this person said this or that.
That if you see this across all sports, like if you go up in a weight class, like almost all your max lifts, whatever your sport is, go up, like you can definitely get relative strength. Like you can definitely get stronger at a certain weight, but it just feels like that at some point just gets to be capped and you're just trying to eke out like, you know, 0.02% more where those athletes are allowed to then add more lean body mass.
Hopefully a lot of portion [00:26:00] of that is muscle. You see their performance then goes up at the next level, like quite a bit in a short period of time too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's definitely crossover. There's definitely crossover and I try to take my time teaching this in my classes because they're not the same.
Right. And we know that, but Right. There's this crossover, so you have to like almost teach it very carefully so that people don't get confused. Like they're not the same, they don't like work, inversely, they don't work. There is this crossover, but, and so there's like the delicate fine line of like, how do they work?
And then when you're talking about weight class sports, like should you train high for you? What if the person doesn't wanna put on extra weight, extra mass? Right. That could really change up. So like, do you focus more on strength or what does that look like? And so that's kind of where, knowing the difference between the two and how to implement them, at least for now, like we're talking sports performance, that really matters, especially in these weight class sports.
So,
Dr Mike T Nelson: yeah. And even that, like if you just pick an Olympic weightlifting, like you have Yeah. The Chinese, which are, you know, [00:27:00] notoriously known for doing a fair amount of hypertrophy work where
Yeah,
other people are not. And then you're like, well maybe that's their structure. Maybe they need to do more hypertrophy work.
'cause they tend to be smaller stature, you know, different bone structure.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Who knows? But arguably there's a lot of people that look different, that are very successful, even in just the sport of Olympic weightlifting. They all right are kind of similar but yet not. And so that's where even within. You can find it to one sport, it gets messy, and then you throw in track and field, or more fuzzy sports, like American football and everything hockey, like you just it gets messy real fast.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. It really does. I know, I, it really does. I like to spend a lot of time on that topic, because that's where the art form comes in, right? I mean, you're not trying to put on a ton of mass on every athlete, especially in weight class sports. And so what does that look like in the weight room?
Should they not go to the weight room? That's always a question I get. No, that's not true. They should go to the weight room. But like, [00:28:00] are they gonna be, you know, doing a ton of Mya reps? Like, probably not. Like, you know, are they gonna be working more on strength, potentially? What does that look like? So I do love that topic.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And related to your study. So tell us about the study and what did you do? Obviously you were looking at myo reps and what was it compared to? Yeah.
Speaker 2: Uh, traditional hypertrophy, so like your traditional three by 10, couple minutes rest in between compared to Mya reps, which is like that activation set with the really short rest and the mini sets, uh, preceding it and we equated the volume.
So they did and intensity match. So it was essentially the same exact program. Just my reps was manipul, like the rest was manipulated. The rest time in between. And we were looking for potential differences between the groups, which we didn't find anything, which is kind of cool because
Dr Mike T Nelson: yeah,
Speaker 2: right.
Similar results. But what we did find was the Maya groups spent two thirds of the time, uh, working out. So pretty neat. We had a [00:29:00] lot of issues. So they got the same result with less
Dr Mike T Nelson: time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the same result with less time. So we had a lot of issues with like dropouts and all that fun stuff, so we're having some trouble publishing this stuff.
But it's really just an exploratory study and I think. The major finding is the component of the time. Like, hey, you can achieve similar things in just less time. And even if it's not so similar, like games wise, it still takes a lot less time. And that could be great for, uh, maybe athletes, para lifting athletes, paralytic student athletes, parents, people who just need to get in and out of the gym.
And we know, right, the importance of skeletal muscle mass. So if we can kind of hand somebody a tool or give them a tool to just have in their back pocket where they could still gain mass pretty similar to your traditional training, that might take them an hour plus in the gym, depending on their program.
And it could cut that time in, you know, nearly half, then why not? Right? So just, hey, look at this cool method that you could potentially utilize. [00:30:00] And that was really the main finding.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Oh, that, that's super cool. Yeah. Yeah. Related to this study, do you. My bias is, I think rest periods are the most abused parameter in strength training period.
Unfortunately. More, I'd say by general population, like if you go to most gyms, you'll see this is usually dudes rest way too long. It's like, really? Do you need to scroll your phone for seven minutes while you're taking a nap on the pec deck? Like a stuffed animal? Like, I don't think you really need to do that.
And unfortunately not to say it's mostly women. Women on the other side tend to turn strength training into circuit training, which is a Metcon, which is its own thing. If you wanna do that, great. Like by all means, like, but that's like a separate thing. It, I don't know, it just feels like to me like. Rest periods are just abused across the spectrum.
Speaker 2: No, I agree. I don't think the rest periods get enough like credit, no one wants to talk
Dr Mike T Nelson: about it.
Speaker 2: Nobody wants to talk about it. And I think that's the most, that's really the biggest differentiator between like your goals and what you're [00:31:00] training for, right? If you're training for hypertrophy, if you're training for strength and you're training for power, if you're training your Olympic lips, like the rest in between each set is really what makes it conducive to your goals, right?
It's really all about the energy systems and how much time you have to recover in between each set. Like what are you tapping into more? And so, yeah, I do think I agree with you. I don't think the rest periods get enough like credit for what they actually do. And if your goal is hypertrophy, but you're resting seven minutes in between each set, you know, I don't really know how conducive that might be to your goal.
So I, I'm sure there's some literature out there, but I haven't quite read it yet, but I think it'd be interesting to see like. Are there differences in games if you're resting, you know, your average one to two-ish minutes in between each set, or what if you sit on your phone and scroll for five to seven minutes?
Is that gonna affect anything likely? But are you gonna get stronger? Maybe because that is more conducive to strength. So that is pretty, you're right. I [00:32:00] think rest does not get enough credit for what it can do. Yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson: And I think Branch Schoenfeld has done, I think two studies on this now. Yeah. And I think he's shown longer rest periods were better for hypertrophy, which again, if you could do higher quality work, I think that makes sense.
Yeah. But I don't quote me on this, I wanna say I think he compared one minute to three minute rest periods or something like that. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't remember being super long in either long direction. Yeah. And my other pet peeve, I feel like I'm just ranting at you now, is that I love this this concept of, because humans think linearly and I think we can blame bodybuilding on alarm three by 10 if forever, if we want do that.
It's never made any darn sense to me that like if, let's say five sets, let's say you're an old school bill star five by five, which is great, do you really need the same rest period between set one and two as you need between set four and five of like heavy ass deadlifts? I would argue you probably need a lot more rest to keep the quality of work higher between four and five.
But then why does every [00:33:00] strengthen and not dependent on the NSDA or anyone else, but everybody does this. Oh, it's just a 60 to 92nd, you know? And if you want more power, you need to rest longer, which I agree with. But like, why do they always make the rest is like the same length? Like I, I make a mesa metric and I just do it like, like an auto regulatory biofeedback.
Yeah. But once you feel good, your heart rate's below 90, you feel like you can hit that five reps again, then you go, if that's, yeah. 30 seconds after set, one to two, great. If that's. Three minutes after set. Three to five or four to five, great. I don't care. Yeah. I want to see the quality of the work done more so than this arbitrary time period.
Speaker 2: I totally agree. And that's why I like ranges and then telling people to not scroll, not like, don't dissociate between your sets. Like stay associated, stay locked in so you don't forget what you're doing and give like, I like to give a range. I do this for myself. Do like give myself a range. [00:34:00] So I'm working on my deadlifts.
I'm giving myself anywhere between like two to three and a half minutes. Yeah. I'm watching the clock. I'm watching the clock. So I've already been the math like, okay, two minutes from now is X, Y, Z. Three and a half minutes from now is X, Y, Z. Once it hits two minutes, if I feel ready, I'll go. If I don't, and usually in those later sets, I don't feel ready.
At two minutes I give myself to that three, three and a half, sometimes even four, depending on how I'm feeling. Sure. And then I go, so I totally agree with you. I agree. I think giving a range and then telling people, don't scroll. Stay associated, stay locked in. Listen to yourself and sit down. Rest. I like to tell people to sit too sitting is important.
I feel like in between especially if you're working on that strength and power. But yeah, I agree. I think the rest needs to be given in a range and then graded as stuff gets tougher in those later sets.
Dr Mike T Nelson: And you said there was some dropout in this? Do you know, kind of why? I mean, that's very typical of any
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Chronic frank training
Dr Mike T Nelson: study, unfortunately. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It was just tightly controlled. So I mean, I was on these guys' asses [00:35:00] all the time, like, and I mean, it was nutrition controlled too. So like, I mean, I'm having them track protein. I'm looking at their logs every day. Like, Hey, it's 2:00 PM where's your breakfast?
Hey, you didn't hit your protein goal. Hey this, hey that, I mean, the training was, it wasn't just like a single body part or yeah. Tell us about the train
Dr Mike T Nelson: setup that you used. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was a full, I mean, full powerlifter esque training routine three days a week. They're squatting, benching, deadlifting accessory work.
So it wasn't easy. It was not easy, and it was really tightly controlled. We had one RM testing pre post, and then we also, one RM tested seven days after training cessation just to look at like fatigue dissipation. I have an abstract for that actually at NSCA next week. Oh, nice. Yeah. And so it was just a lot of commitments, a lot of really testing.
And we did our RMR testing. We did the one rms we did two conference. We did so much, and so I think people just couldn't commit for that long. I mean, eight weeks to, and it wasn't an in-person. Where I'm watching them, training study. It [00:36:00] was vir, essentially virtual, like all the testing was in person, but their training was on their own.
But I had them submit video of every single set and rep. So consistent video uploading, I'm watching a ton of videos every single day.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Our most life of a PhD.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean it's like 4:00 AM Wake up, go to the lab. I'm watching videos all day. It's just nonstop. And so I just, I think it was just really tightly controlled and people were just like, oh, can't do this.
I mean, week two, week three, everyone's like, oh, can't keep up. Can't post videos, not logging. So I have to just kick 'em out. Yeah. So it was tough, but
Dr Mike T Nelson: yeah. And I know like, 'cause everyone's a critic of studies online now, and half the people Yeah. Have never published a freaking study in their life. It's hard.
It's like, bro, like if you've been in the lab at like four or five in the morning to turn the machines on, to be calibrated, to do testing. Yeah. To have like half the people oversleep or not show up to reschedule. Yeah. Anyway, so I get it that yes, eight weeks from a physiologic [00:37:00] timeframe is definitely short.
Yeah. But as you know, like the longer you run that study, your risk of dropouts, your risk of everything else goes up. And you could run 16 weeks study and you may not even have enough data to freaking publish anything. So now you went from like something to nothing.
Speaker 2: Yep. That's kind of how I feel like I am.
This is the kind of the boat I'm stuck in right now, but that's okay. There's always a way, there's always a home for, you know, a paper and a lot of fun abstracts. A lot of fun. Convos have come from this a lot. I mean, I've learned so much just about like the nuances of training, conducting a training study and everyone's a training
Dr Mike T Nelson: expert online too, in addition to nutrition.
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: I have so much respect now for people who conduct training studies on the regular. It is, it's babysitting, it's a pain in the ass. So much. It's what it is. It's such a pain in the ass. And so I have just learned so much and it's been great, even though like it didn't turn out how I wanted [00:38:00] it to turn out with like, numbers wise it was so great and I, I appreciate it for what it was.
Dr Mike T Nelson: And did you see any, uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but you did not see any difference in hypertrophy or strength or, uh, resting metabolic rate or any other markers you tested?
Speaker 2: No, nothing major, nothing significant. Everybody essentially improved in everything. Uh, really the major difference was the time component.
Dr Mike T Nelson: And what was like a time, so in this study, so people have an idea, like was it,
Speaker 2: yeah,
Dr Mike T Nelson: I think you said it was two thirds, so like a 60 minute session would've been 40 minutes. Like in terms of Yeah. Actual times comparison between the groups.
Speaker 2: Yes. I believe the traditional, uh, group, they averaged 83 minutes for a training session across the eight weeks.
So that's 24 different sessions for a total of an average of 83 minutes per session. And then the Maya group, I believe was. 50 something minutes. 50. Yeah. So just under an hour. And [00:39:00] then the TRA group was about almost an hour and a half.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Very cool.
Speaker 2: So major difference. Yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Awesome. Yeah. So do you have a, once you recover from this and decide to do another training study, you forget about how miserable it was conducting it?
Oh, yeah. Or what are your plans for the future?
Speaker 2: Yeah I know I definitely wanna do more training studies. I need to gather a team though, like that's a, like I, I didn't have a big enough team for this Mayo study, so it was a lot of just me, you know, doing everything. So I think having a really good team could make it happen.
Having a really good lab, like a nice lab with my own equipment, like training, like proper training equipment, you know, some barbells. And I think I would need to have this set up before I could attempt it again. But. I would definitely attempt it. Again, there's just like so many questions, like we've already talked about so many questions that are unanswered and I'm really passionate about like bridging the gap between this and like this [00:40:00] pro science as well as like the clinical side of it and how there's a translation and we know gen pop also needs to worry about skeletal muscle mass.
Yeah. Not just for aesthetics, but for health. And so I think that's kind of the avenue I wanna take in the future is how can we translate some of these like training studies to also matter and also, you know, help the clinical population or even just gen pop. That's really what I'm passionate about.
So that's definitely the avenue I see the training studies going in.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Very cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Do you use this method in your own training? I know you mentioned you've did more physique sports Yeah. In the past. Is that correct?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've done some physique sports in the past. Yes, I competed in bodybuilding. It was fun, taught me a lot about myself, mentally, physically, uh, taught me a lot about the respect it takes and like the time or the time it takes.
And I have a lot of respect for bodybuilders because building muscle muscles, it's 24 7
Dr Mike T Nelson: thing.
Speaker 2: It's a job. It is such a job. And yeah, I just feel very fortunate to [00:41:00] have had that experience before even knowing I liked science and now liking this kind of science. I really have such a respect for hypertrophy training.
Whether it's for just aesthetics or whether it's for health and for life, or post-injury, post-surgical, you know, atrophy that you need to rebuild. I feel like I really know what it takes physically, not just like textbook wise. My rep specifically. I've definitely, I piloted the program, so I did most of the program and it's brutal.
You feel swollen, which is great, right? Crazy pumps. But I don't regularly train hypertrophy. Like it's not really my goal. I think some of my accessory works are tailored towards hypertrophy just for the extra volume. But most of my training, my current training is just some Olympic weight lifts some Olympic weightlifting and I love a good deadlift, so I have those in there often.
But yeah, no, I don't do a ton of my reps right now. That's not to say I definitely have done in the past, and I, that's not to say I won't do them in the future. 'cause with time constraints, who knows what kind of, [00:42:00] you know, it's good to have these tricks up your sleeve, so, yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Oh, awesome. What are your main lifting goals or performance goals now?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I am on a mission to deadlift 315 pounds, so that's kind of Oh, nice. My latest goal. Yeah. I How close are you? I've hit 300 pretty Okay. I would say pretty easily. Just a single one rm. Awesome. I had more tank. And do you mind
Dr Mike T Nelson: stating what your body weight is for listeners, if that's okay? Yes.
Speaker 2: I'm about 148 pounds.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Okay. Yeah, so that's definitely up there. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So two X body weight deadlift for sure. Is there. I just need to, you know, hit the three 15. I wanna load the three plates on. I wanna know what that feels like. Yeah,
Dr Mike T Nelson: totally.
Speaker 2: So that's the latest performance goal. And then just squat cleaning 1 65 is the latest performance goal.
I know for the Olympic weightlifters out there, it's not that impressive. But for me, who's not like a Olympic sport person, Olympic weightlifting, like competitor, I'm also like a runner. And I like to like lift in other ways and manner. So for me, that's my personal goal.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's [00:43:00] really, those are the two main goals right now.
Dr Mike T Nelson: And you said you do a fair amount of aerobic stuff too, is that right? Yeah,
Speaker 2: I do. Yeah. I love to run. I've run a mar, I run one marathon in my past. Oh. I run Nice. A lot of half marathons. That's my favorite distance. I love a good half marathon. I try to just keep the aerobic work in really, like pretty regularly have a run club.
I started at home with just like a random group of people around the neighborhood and every Thursday we run anywhere between like 20, 30 minutes. So that's kind of my like low dose aerobic work throughout the week. And then I'm a big time sprinter. I love a good sprint session. Whether that's if I can get on a track or if I can get on an air runner, or sometimes it's just the salt bike intervals.
But that's definitely a weekly or biweekly staple as well.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Do you worry about any of the potential interference between lifting and aerobic stuff or do you think that's been overdone? No, I know everyone has their own biased opinion.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't think it, I'm definitely not worried about it. I don't think it, if anything, I think it [00:44:00] enhances, like the aerobic work enhances my, uh, like strength performance.
Just 'cause I would agree. I can recover, yeah. I can recover between sets so fast, therefore I can usually get more work done. I have enough gas after, like my heavy kind of strength work to do the rest of the volume for my workouts. So no, I think it actually compliments it really nicely. I think of course if I was out running like, you know, a hundred miles a week, it'd be a different story, but Oh yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson: That's different.
Speaker 2: Yeah. A different story. But I don't run that much. I try to keep it pretty like sprinty and then one shortish, longish run a week.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And if you look at the literature on that, like you need a pretty
Speaker 2: Yeah. High
Dr Mike T Nelson: dose to start having an interference effect. Unless you're just all out speed and power, then like, right.
Yeah. That's a little bit different. And even then, like. Running is probably the one modality. You would see it more before cycling and rowing and anything else just because of the impact on the lower body. But
yeah,
even then you still need, I can't remember the exact numbers offhand, but it's pretty high [00:45:00] mileage that most people are probably just not gonna get to.
Speaker 2: Totally. I think a lot of the like, oh, interference effect or a lot of other, I don't even know what other examples I can think off, think of off the top of my head, but a lot of these like cautionary like statements are just so far out of people's scopes that they don't have to worry about. Oh, like the women getting bulky from strength training.
Like you have to really work hard to get bulky. Like, and no offense to my girls out there, but if you're already scared of lifting, like the chances of you working hard enough to get bulky are slim to none. And so I don't, that's definitely another one that people just don't need to worry about. So yeah, I think a lot of these cautionary like statements are just way far out of the scope of anybody.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah I like the Dan John quote. He is like, oh, okay. He is like, well, don't worry. We'll cut you back just before that happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Don't worry. We'll let you know. You'll know.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And I'm like, I've been lifting moderately heavy again, my goal, not mean not [00:46:00] hypertrophy at all costs for like three decades.
And I wouldn't say I'm a huge mammal, you know? I'm
Speaker 2: like totally. And there are
Dr Mike T Nelson: hyper responders. There are freaks out there. Yeah, there are outliers. But
Speaker 2: yeah,
Dr Mike T Nelson: there're also the outliers. So the odds of them being you are very slim.
Speaker 2: Agreed. And I think a lot of it, especially now I'm thinking about like the women getting bulky thing, but it gets conflated with like fat masks and people think, oh, I'm getting bulkier.
I'm getting bulkier because I'm lifting. Like, not necessarily sure to the naked eye you might be, but that's just because. Maybe it's time to lean out a little bit, right? Like you want to change the composition of your body. You don't necessarily want to be bulky, but you should want to change the composition of your body.
Gain mass, lose body fat. And that's usually the de like this desirable tone look that people are looking for. They just don't realize it. And so that's like another part that I really try to like educate clients and students is lifting inherently doesn't make you bulky. It just is the [00:47:00] composition of your makeup.
And that's probably what needs addressed. And that doesn't always include, or that doesn't always mean that we, you're doing the gym is wrong. Like maybe let's look at nutrition as well or let's look at sleep habits and let's look at everything else before, you know, we make the gym the bad guy, but the gym always gets the bad rep and it makes me so sad.
It's not the weights. It's not the weights.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And it seems like, I dunno if you would agree with us that. For women. Somehow the body weight of one 20 to one 30 just got stuck in every female client's head I've ever worked with. Like even female athletes who are, you know, one of them was five 10.
She's like, oh, I should be like one 30. And I'm like, what?
What do you, no.
And so I literally had to show her like pictures of Olympic level athletes that were very lean. Granted, they did have some muscle. Yeah. Who weighed 1 65 to one 90, you know? Yeah. Who were five eight to five, 10 and a half, [00:48:00] you know, and if you looked at them just in street clothes, I guarantee most people would never guess their body weight was close to that.
Right.
So it's this weird distorted, I don't know how that perception happened, I guess.
Speaker 2: I know I know I hate the hyper fixation on the, like the number on the scale. Like it doesn't tell us really anything like. More so what do you feel like, what do you look like? But body compass tells a lot more of the story than just the number on the scale.
And so that's a big one too, that I like to harp on.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And I had another client, she was in the lab I worked in for a while was a student and she was the top, uh, USC fighter was on tv. That's awesome. And you would see her in street clothes and you'd be like, yeah, definitely. Looks like she trained, I think her body weight at weigh in was 1 48 and nobody would guess that her weight was that high, you know, 'cause she wasn't a real tall athlete.
But I would show this to students all the time to [00:49:00] show here's someone who's incredibly lean, a very high level athlete on an actual televised, weigh in for a legitimate fight. So, you know, no one faked her weight 'cause.
Speaker 2: Right.
Dr Mike T Nelson: I've worked with other figure athletes who did a photo shoot for a magazine that's now defunct and her body weight was 1 55.
And the magazine listed her at 1 32. She is like, what the, what is this? She's like, I don't weigh that. So just trying to show at least some female athletes of like, you know, here's an example of someone who is, you know, very lean and this is what they actually weigh. And all the students were like,
Speaker 2: Ooh.
Dr Mike T Nelson: They're like all a gast. That, like, someone weighed that much, you know? Yeah.
Speaker 2: I feel like I actually run into that myself. Like, I feel like people don't think that I weigh close to 150 pounds when I tell them, but like, I, I do. And I think it's, yeah, like they don't real, like, I'm sure and, but my composition's just a lot different than maybe somebody else I've been lifting for many years and whatnot.
So I think it is kind of shocking, [00:50:00] like, oh, you're five four and you weigh 150 pounds. Like, I don't, doesn't seem right. I'm like, yeah,
Dr Mike T Nelson: that's right. And
Speaker 2: like, I don't focus on that number. I, you know, I focus on like the composition, how I feel, how my clothes fit, and, yeah. It's just when I know like when you have muscle you just weigh more, so
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah.
Yeah. And that, it's hard to explain that obviously via physics, a pound of muscle and a pound of fat are still a pound. They still weigh the same. Yeah, still
the same. But
in terms of density, like muscle is so much more dense and just literally takes up less space. Yep. So you can literally weigh even sometimes more in paradoxically, smaller looks smaller.
Speaker 2: Yep. Yep. Totally.
Dr Mike T Nelson: And I believe you've done some other, uh, certifications and other things related to the sports realm. Correct.
Speaker 2: What was that?
Dr Mike T Nelson: I think you've done other, like, besides your PhD, you've worked with athletes and you've [00:51:00] done, uh, I think, were you an LMT or LAT and worked on
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Some other aspects too.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm an A TC atc. That's what it was. I'm sorry. Yeah. No, you're good. I was confused by the question, but yes, you're right. So, some of my work is also, I started off as more like a clinical practitioner working with injuries, working with rehabs, working kind of in that athletic training, sports medicine realm.
I've always loved strength and conditioning. I've always loved sports. And when I was in college, I originally wanted to be like a medical doctor. I wanted to be an ortho. I was like, I'm determined to be an orthopedic surgeon. It's gonna be great. And I just, that didn't end up working out. That's just really not what I ended up wanting to do.
And that's really how I got into science and academia. And that's also where my love for like the science of strength and conditioning started to flourish and blossom. And I found that the clinical practical side just didn't lean as much as I wanted on the evidence. And that's really what [00:52:00] started to pique my interest in like.
Okay, what's all the science about? And all these people I look up to have these things called PhDs. And at the time, like, I don't know, in undergrad and even my master's, I didn't love research. It wasn't something that I ever saw myself going into. And I'm a first generation college student, so nobody in my family knows anything about like PhD or anything like that.
So I just like was when doing my own research, right? When doing like looking up why do I, why do people get cupping done? Why do people, you know, all these like modalities that you use in like PTAT all the people that I respected that had good information all had PhDs. And I was like, wait, interesting.
So that's kind of how I started to explore that route. Really just like I was missing the why behind the things that I was doing as a clinician. So that, yeah, it led me down the PhD research, academia path, and now I'm kind of. On a mission to bridge the gap because there's a lot of things that get done in, [00:53:00] uh, like sports medicine specifically that just don't have a lot of merit, but it feels good and athletes like it.
And it's kind of click baby, so people do it. But at some point, are you just wasting your people's time? Are you wasting their rehab? Right? I mean, the goal is player availability. Don't you want the best evidence, the most efficient form and way to get them back on the field? And yeah, that's just, that's where the passion kind of came from.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I feel like that, not to say something bad about a whole entire field, but I feel like it's this weird bipolar thing where on one hand there's still a lot of the just, you know, rice injuries, even though we've got tons of data showing ice probably isn't the best thing. Yeah. I could maybe let it go for 24 hours, reduce local inflammation, but it's like two weeks later and you're still like icing the crap outta stuff.
Like I. I don't know, but it seems like there's a lot of protocols that are very much, this is what we've always done. Yeah. This is what we're gonna do. And then [00:54:00] you've got the flip side of the craziest shit you've ever seen done by groups of people who don't ironically test anything. It's like, I'm okay.
Insane you doing, it's doing wacky, weird shit. But you need to then demonstrate that your wacky weird shit like did something game, you went to N oh one. Even if it's just the person sitting in front of me like, you need to give me some data here, please.
Speaker 2: Yep. Yep. That's seriously how I got into academia because I was the practicing clinician and I was like, how are we, how do we know we're helping this person?
Like why am I doing the same thing massage and cup and doing these baby exercises when I know they're stronger than that? Like, why am I doing this? Is this actually helping? And that is really truly what led me to studying more because. It just felt wrong sometimes. And you're right, there's a lot of things that are just done and not measured.
And I mean, you're playing with people's lives here. Like your athlete tears, your ACL, and they are [00:55:00] post-op. And let's say they're, I don't know, a couple weeks out and they're starting to regain some strength, but they're still doing banded leg lifts. Like if you know anything about the science of hypertrophy, that's not gonna, you know, combat the atrophy, but more clam cells that'll
Dr Mike T Nelson: fix that gluten mead.
Yeah. Like it's week 27, man, it's gonna work this week. It's insanity.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And so that is irks me. Irks me because the science is so simple and not simple. Because we had just talked about how it's so complex actually. Oh yeah. The principles.
Dr Mike T Nelson: But
Speaker 2: the principles, yeah. The principles are there. So if we know how to increase muscle mass, why are we not applying those principles like the foundations to somebody who is desperate for it?
Who their right quad is atrophied. X percent from surgery. Why are we not applying the same principles? Why are we, you know, handicapping them and giving them slams shells and banded leg raises and ankle weights? I mean, we know how to build mass. Like that's where the, that's where like my passion for the translation from the [00:56:00] bro science of the clinical population is, was born is like, if we know how to like do it on these people, how could like these principles not apply to the people who, you know, just came, not just came outta surgery, but are farther along the rehab that they could get on a, like, extension machine.
You know, I mean, you could have them do my reps for Christ's sake. Like, you know, why are they still doing clamshells? And so yeah, that's really, that's my passion, my burning passion.
Dr Mike T Nelson: No, that, that's cool. And the people I fall in that realm, who are some of my mentors, they're almost always, this sounds bad to say, but never from that field.
They're usually from a different field and they're almost always viewed as the weird, crazy person. And yeah, they do some weird stuff, but at the end of the day, they're the people that are called in to fix like multimillion dollar athletes when nothing else works either. And as weird as some of the stuff they do, they can point to a track record.
And when I've worked with 'EM one-on-one, they can at least show, [00:57:00] okay, here's how I would test this. Here's how I would test that. They're very regimented about what they're actually testing, whether that's manual muscle testing or vertical BER HRV or whatever metric you want to pick.
Yeah.
And it's just that it's so odd to me that it's this dichotomy of protocol based stuff, which doesn't seem to work.
You've got the crazy people who don't seem to test stuff, and then you've got what I call the fixers that come in and just piss everyone else off, but yet seem to get a result. And yet people in the organization aren't like, Hey, what did you do? How did you do that? They're just mad at 'em. And then just pay much money to fix the person.
And then they go back and break 'em again and
Speaker 2: yeah, it's a mess. It's a mess. Like if you're not testing, you're just guessing. Yeah. And if you're just guessing with people and their lives and their livelihood and their passions and their sports and you know, what brings them identity and life, then, I mean, you suck at your job.
And so I think that needs to be fixed. And that's, it's just, there needs to be an awakening because you cannot just be guessing with people in their rehabs [00:58:00] and the exercises. And, I mean, there's gotta be a method to the madness, and you have to know why, and you have to back it up. And how do you get buy-in from your clients or your athletes and your teams if you are not telling them why you're doing things?
That's a huge red flag to me. Like if I ask you why, you should know why, or at least have a justification or can point me in the right direction, not just because, oh, that's what. The protocol says, if you're six weeks out, we have to do X, Y, z. Well, if Johnny is six weeks out and he's feeling really strong and Lindsay's six weeks out and she's feeling even stronger, should they do the same thing?
No. Right. And so you have to have like the autonomy and the experience as a clinician, whether that's backed up by data plus experience or just data to like make these decisions and these choices. Like, hey, yeah the paper protocol says that six weeks you have to be doing this, but you look a lot better.
Let's try this, or let's slowly progress this. So you can't get stuck on, on, you know, what you like always learn in school. I give you a paper like this is what an ACL protocol looks like, or rehab [00:59:00] looks like. Like eh, I mean, it's okay to use it as a skeleton, but
Dr Mike T Nelson: yeah.
Speaker 2: There's, you know, a lot of nuance, so, yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And I had a, I won't say what organization, but a organization of professional athlete that is on record making millions of dollars a year. And my argument to them was. Uh, I don't necessarily have to be right with all this stuff. Like we can test all of this and I can, we can have a discussion about is X test the best test or the not the best?
Or we can have a discussion about what is the best testing or what outcomes. But gone are the days of just guessing and hoping that, yeah, X thing works for eight weeks. Like we don't even, that is so, in my opinion, outdated. Like, and we don't, and if you test all the stuff, it, there's no ego involved. It's no, this person was right, that person was wrong.
Like, I don't care. Like you show me a better way to do it and you could show me the data in front of me. Cool. Let's go with that. Yeah. And then you [01:00:00] can make decisions on actual data and not, well, the protocol said for six weeks or Bob said we need to do this and Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I. I agree. I have, and this is the other thing is that if you haven't been humbled by the data before, you just don't know that.
And I have been humbled so many times where I think this is gonna happen and then I get proven wrong time and time again. And that in like in the moment you're like, gosh, I hate this feeling. But in the long run, I'm so grateful for that because I have, again, like this healthy respect for testing because I know I tend to be wrong.
Like there's like, you just can't, like you can't be right all the time. And you have to know that. And when you get, when that gets proven to you, time and time again, you learn like, okay, this is why this is important. Because even though I think I'm smart and I've done school for this long and I have all this experience, like it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter. So, and if you think that you're always right, that's a giant red [01:01:00] flag.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And that's, you can tell people who have, like yourself, who have worked in research, but also have some clinical experience, they're almost. Polar opposites. Like if I'm gonna run a study, I wanna do everything. I'm gonna have a sham control.
I wanna do everything possible so that there's not an effect of the placebo of blah, blah, blah, blah. If there's an elite athlete in front of me, like they don't give a shit about it, what any of the research says, like, I gotta play in three days. Yeah, I don't really care what you do, but I'm gonna play in three days.
So make it go away. Fix the thing as fast as you can. I don't care what the research says. I'm glad you read it. Yeah, I'm not gonna read it. I don't even care if I'm the outlier from the research, like I'm paying you a lot of money for a result. That's it. Period.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, and that, right. This is not even to bash on the things that are not like supported by the research because I think that they have their place too.
Like I don't think, oh, sure, massage is gonna fix anybody, but. [01:02:00] Whether it's placebo, no SIBO effect, whether it's just a sensory issue and it helps whether it's promoting blood flow or not. Yeah. And they like it and it works in their mind that those points go towards player availability. And that's, if that's what gets your person on the field, then that's what works.
And as long as you know that, right? Yes. As long as you're not hanging your hat on, Hey, this cupping this grass stand, this massage is what fixed my person. And because it's magical, like no, you should know that it's not. And that, you know, whatever the other reasons were that helped grate. But again, just with a grain of salt and informing your athlete of that too needed.
Right. Or if they ask. And so I agree. I think the two can coexist. You just have to know when, where, and why.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And by all means, like always do more research, like whatever crazy technique, like I wanna see more.
Yeah.
Research on it and if there's something different or it changes or the mechanism or whatever, but.
Kinda like what you said. The first question is, [01:03:00] does it even work? Yeah. Like I think unfortunately with research, it's very mechanistic based and we're doing mechanistic stuff before we even know if what we're doing is working. Which is again, why like your study, it's like, it does, is this method even better?
Like how about we start there? Yeah. Like we can argue about mechanism of muscle hypertrophy and strength and you know, rate coding and all the other principles, but,
right. Is
this method better than this one? How about we start there and try to answer that question first?
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. And usually the answer is no.
Usually it's all, it all works to an extent. Just how do we manipulate it and what's important to you? Is time more important to you? Do you care to be in the gym less, more, do you? I don't know. Right. So it might be better for one person who doesn't have a lot of time, but another person might be like, oh, that's, you know, I'm not looking for the least effective dose.
I wanna do the most, I wanna do more. I wanna be in the gym more. So, you know, it's. It's also subjective. Like some of these, you know, is it better or not? Things [01:04:00] comparison. So
Dr Mike T Nelson: yeah, that's why
Speaker 2: science is fun.
Dr Mike T Nelson: That's like with the hypertrophy we talked about too. Yeah. Like if you're a bodybuilder or a physique athlete, you don't really care about performance.
You're not graded on performance. Yeah. Like who cares to do things to get 5% more hypertrophy? It's probably well worth it to you.
Yeah, exactly. You know, but
it seems also weird in the fitness space that even for general population, I feel like it, the default appears to be only hypertrophy. Yeah. And I would make an argument, I think you'd probably agree that yes, we want more muscle.
Yes, we don't want to lose muscle, but performance also matters at the end of the day too, in terms of just your quality of life.
Speaker 2: Yep. Quality of life, quality of said muscle, right? Yeah. We don't just want like big, bulky muscle. We want muscle that can do things and help us and move us and you know, so yes, I agree.
I think I answered a question on my Instagram story about that, something about it was something similar to like the quality of your muscle and setting performance goals. Not just aesthetic goals, especially for the [01:05:00] general population. A lot of people's goals are like, oh, how can I get bigger?
How can I look better? Well, that's not always gonna carry, you know, carry you down the line and it's not always gonna build long sustainable habits. And that's the goal as long sustainable habits that you can utilize for the rest of your life. And so that's why I'm a big fan of performance goals and setting those, because personally, at least anecdotally for me, if I'm just going to the gym to look good.
It's not gonna hold up. Like, I'm, I'll go for like a couple days, a couple weeks, but if I'm going to the gym, because I know that I've made a public goal to deadlift 315 pounds by the end of the year, I'm gonna go to the gym because I'm not gonna fall back on that goal. And so I think that's the power of performance goals are just for adherence and longevity is, you know, like, I don't think there's anything else that kind of lines up.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I mean that's the same thing I do with all my clients. I take whatever their goal is and I translate it into a performance goal. Yeah. Even if they're a physique athlete. Yeah. It's like, okay, roughly even [01:06:00] if I don't tell 'em, and like in my head I'm thinking, I wanna see about this weight to this amount.
And like, yes, I understand you wanna work more on your glutes or your shoulders. Or whatever. But then I translate that into, okay, how much mechanical loading can we get? Can we get more volume? And over time you should get stronger. You should be able to do more volume with those things. And those are the things you can see, like week to week, like you could see a rep or two differe.
Like even the average person, if you gain two pounds of lean body mass with no fat in a week, I, that's even hard pressed, I think, to even notice a difference if it was spread out over like, you know, your whole physique.
Yeah.
So I think it's very hard to stay motivated when the thing you're trying to look at.
Maybe you get some of an inaccurate picture every six to 12 months, you know? Yeah that's hard. Totally. Or you could get like
Yeah.
Daily direction of, and it's not always gonna be better, like when you go to the gym, at least for performance rated stuff.
Speaker 2: Yep. I [01:07:00] a hundred percent agree. That's exactly why I'm a huge fan and advocate for performance goals.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Awesome. Yeah. Uh, and last question I'll ask you, what do you got going on next? Uh, I feel like for female general population, even athletes, I feel like it's actually gotten better and I think there is a much more emphasis on. Performance now than there ever used to be. Yeah. Where I feel like it, it's still a little bit like, eh, it's still physique based, but I feel like at least for the women's athletes, and maybe this is from the Olympics or different things like that, right.
I feel like it's becoming much more accepted to be a female who actually focuses on performance. What are your thoughts on that? Yes,
Speaker 2: I totally agree. I'm a little hesitant to agree because I know that I surround myself with those kind of people, so Oh, sure. Is just
Dr Mike T Nelson: my,
Speaker 2: is it just my bubble that, you know, is making me think this, but I would love to live in the you know, blissful, ignorant, blissful world of Yes, like [01:08:00] women in performance goals and like people watching women's sports and the Olympics, and different body shapes and different body sizes and awesome achievements that they can all, you know, do and complete.
So I do agree, like at least. Anecdotally in, in my bubble, I have seen, you know, an increase in women doing awesome cool things and not just being hyper-focused on what they look like or aesthetic goals. So yes, I agree and I hope it just continues to flourish and blossom.
Dr Mike T Nelson: And I lied second to last question.
Do you feel like female athletes, when they focus more on performance, this is what I've noticed over many years, like most of my clients, even though I write to dudes, like most of my clients are actually women, it seems to solve two issues. Like they get more focused on performance, so it, they don't get as hyper-focused on physique, but yet their physique actually tends to improve faster.
Like they get like a two for one. And I don't know if that's because they're [01:09:00] more looking at performance or it's because they have better proprioception or they have better ation of what's actually in their body, or they realize more what they could do or, I dunno. That's just what I've noticed over the last like two decades.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have to also agree because I've experienced that myself. Like I was a physique athlete and hyper focused on what I look like, and as soon as no competition was in sight, like my whole entire physique would change not for the better. And I would be co obsessed and upset and it would interfere with my ability to even like get to the gym and stick to my goals.
And that could have played, that likely, played a major role in my fitness, both like physically, mentally. And then once I kind of, you know, got into the science of it all and adopted a more performance based like foundation, I feel that I. Look the best. I feel the best. And I don't even worry about what I look, I mean, sometimes I forget to eat back when I was a bodybuilder, I wouldn't even, I would never even think about forgetting to eat.
Like I was [01:10:00] thinking about eating every second of every day. And like this morning I forgot to eat because I was so busy and I just had a moment of self-reflection, like, wow, I actually forgot to eat. There was a time where I only thought about food 24 7. And yeah, I feel good. I have never been this strong, I've never been able to like run this fast this long and be this strong in my life.
And I mean, I don't know, I don't think you can ask for anything more. And that all kind of happened when you let go of those shackles of just like working out to look good. Yeah. So yeah, I agree with you.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Awesome. Yeah. So what do you have next? What's going up
Speaker 2: NS C's next week? So are you gonna be there?
Dr Mike T Nelson: No, unfortunately I won't. So that's okay. I've been there all the place the, and presented at national and yeah, it's always super fun. Like just a great event, almost, not in a bad way, almost a little overwhelming. There was always like multiple stages that are going on the same time that I wanted to see like both speakers, but it's always fun. Right,
Speaker 2: right. That's awesome. Yeah, that's really next. NSC is next and then some traveling right [01:11:00] before the school year starts and just hitting the road. And then school starts in August and we've got a bunch of fun research projects just collaborating with people. I just applied for like a mini grant at our school, hoping to do a, like a cool magnesium study that I've been Oh, interesting.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Might take in athletes or,
Speaker 2: I think we're just doing gen pop right now. We haven't finalized the proposal. It's been submitted for the grant, but still some room for changes, but I think it's just gonna be in the general population. We've got a, I got a cool study with Jose, Dr. Antonio with some BHB, kind of like the new caffeine looking at that.
Ah,
Dr Mike T Nelson: is that a Esther or Salt Beta hydroxybutyrate, right? Like he told me. Yeah. Be,
Speaker 2: Yep. I'm not actually the most familiar. He's the one that kind of was like, Hey, let's do this together. I'm like, okay, tell me what to do.
Dr Mike T Nelson: So
Speaker 2: that's gonna be fun, uh, getting in touch with him and like the ISSN has really opened up the door for all this, like sports supplementation research.
So that's, I think that's really what's next. Although I'm always gonna be, have, always gonna have that training background [01:12:00] and always gonna try to keep like the training studies going. But really what's next I think is a lot of the sport nutrition research and, yeah. Cool.
Dr Mike T Nelson: That's awesome. Yeah. Uh, so where can people find out more about you?
I don't know if you work with athletes or you've got more website. Yeah. I know you've got a lot of great stuff on social media, so tell us all about it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Social media, social Instagram is usually where I'm at. I don't really do any other forms of social media besides Instagram. I have a LinkedIn a LinkedIn, but I'm the most active on Instagram.
You can find all my fun links there. You can find I'm, I try to be as active as possible posting stories. I've been doing those like ask me anything stories. Oh, nice. Are fun. Those are fun. And I'm always up for that. Yeah. Email. You can email my, all my information's on my Instagram. So basically if me find my Instagram, Dr.
Antonella Schwarz, it's all there. Cool. I'm always on there. Cool.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for all your time and, uh, sharing everything and thank you so much for struggling through a chronic study, which we [01:13:00] definitely need more of those. It is a brutal thing. I've. Never done a full chronic study myself.
I've always done just interventional stuff with multiple test points, and that was a big enough pain in the ass. So, uh, kudos for getting that done.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Cool. Awesome. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Big thanks to Dr. Schwarz for being on the podcast and answering all my crazy questions. Really appreciate it. Uh, make sure to check out all of her great information on primarily Instagram as the best place, uh, to find her and really appreciate all of her time or great talk. At ISSN, you're looking for the latest in training and nutrition.
Uh, make sure to check out the ISSN next year. It'll be June. Somewhere in Florida. I dunno if they have a date announced yet, but but I'll be there. It'll be super fun. This past year was great. And if you're looking for electrolytes, check out [01:14:00] our friends LMNT below. If you're looking for some cognitive support for something that's not a stimulant based thing for later in the day, check out our friends over at Teton Ketone Esters.
And for all the latest information, hop onto my newsletter. You have a link down below. We'll send you a cool free gift. If you are interested in the online membership, uh, drop me a note. ASAP 'cause that'll probably close pretty soon. And then we also have the Flexible Meathead course, the level two, which will be opening again August 11th.
And I'll have all the information there primarily to the newsletter. Uh, the first level was all on aerobic training, so your old school kind of cardio. The second level would be on more anaerobic training, which I know that's aerobic, anaerobics, kind of an artificial, the linear line there. But, uh, just makes it easy to split all the course material out.
So this will include everything from various short intervals to moderate based intervals to a lot more of the [01:15:00] higher intensity work. How do you program that? How do you do it For people who are primarily lifting, they're not necessarily a endurance, uh, athlete. So newsletter will have all that information there starts August 11th.
Thank you so much for listening to the podcast, really appreciate it. You can help us out by hitting the old, the like button, the subscribe, the download. Leave us a short review, whatever stars you feel is appropriate. All that wonderful stuff makes it a huge difference, uh, on the old algorithms. If you are one of the rare people watching this on YouTube, I know most of this is audio.
But if you are on the YouTube at the Flex Diet Channel, if you could really help us out by hitting subscribe there, uh, my goal this year is to get over a thousand subscribers on YouTube and I'll probably start doing more with that coming up. So thank you so much, greatly appreciate it. Talk to all of you next week.
Speaker 4: Did you see that? Yes. The frog is certainly taking a beating on [01:16:00] this show. Yeah. It's hard to feel sorry for him. We take a beating every show.
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