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Tips for Maximizing Muscle Gains and Athletic Performance with Troy Taylor · FitMitTuro Fitness Podcast

• 1:08
  So welcome to fit me to fitness podcast. Today's episode, I have a amazing guest, Troy Taylor, three. First of all, welcome to my soul. And before we jump into today's topics, would you mind a little bit? Introduction yourself, who you are, what you're doing, and little bit about your background?
• 1:30
  Yeah, absolutely. Number one, really appreciate you having me on looking forward to our conversation. Yeah. So background is mainly been for about 20 years was in Olympic sport was fortunate over about 20 years to work for three different Olympic teams across summer and winter sport for Team GB Team Canada and Team USA, as a strength and conditioning coach, a physiologist, a sports scientist, later, a Director of Sports Science and medicine and a high performance director. And so really just helping some of the best athletes in the world, hopefully adding one or 2% to their performance to hopefully get them on, you know, onto the podium, and ideally, the top step of the podium. So really did that enjoyed it? Love that?
• 2:12
  Yes, spent a long time doing it.
• 2:12
  And then around 2015 I was working as the High Performance director at US Olympic skiing snowboarding team. And a lot of what my job was was finding new innovations, finding what's coming next, like you know, everyone's doing, I would say quote, unquote, elite sport, the basics. You know, everyone's got strength and conditioning coaches, everyone's got physiologist, everyone's got mental performance coaches or psychologists and dieticians, and nutritionists. And yeah, all the bases are generally quite well covered at this point. And so we were really thinking and why we should focus on those 90% of the time, my job was a lot to think about what's coming next and where, where we might find competitive advantage. So I started working with a bunch of Silicon Valley companies, I'm based in the US and Silicon Valley's down there. And so we started running projects in, I had no transcranial direct current brain stimulation, a company called Halo back in the day, we ran projects in virtual reality, and filming Olympic courses in 360 video. And as part of those explorations, I started, I got aware of tonal, essentially a home fitness company, but was doing something that I thought was really innovative as it relates to resistance training. And fast forward a couple of years, I got one for some of my elite athletes, namely Michaela Schifrin, pretty decent, pretty decent skier, to say the least, tried it, I loved it. And then yeah, two years later ended up working for the company, essentially, they started a performance innovation team, really sort of working on the edge of product development. So how can we bring some of this elite level knowledge to a consumer fitness device, a little bit on our content, the programming that's on our on our programming, and also around thought leadership and research opportunities of how we can utilize this device to improve the lives of not just, you know, elite athletes, but of hundreds of 1000s. And hopefully, eventually millions of people.
• 4:04
  So I've been doing that for about nearly three years now.
• 4:07
  And it's, it's pretty fun.
• 4:10
  Oh, yeah, I bet it sounds really, really fascinating.
• 4:14
  Would you mind sharing, like, what is what is the dawn of doing? Like, what kind of fitness equipment like if so nobody knows about that company?
• 4:21
  And what is what is it all about? Yeah, absolutely. It's, if you depending on how we crop this video, but it's on the wall behind me, it's it's a strength training or resistance training device. It's essentially a functional trainer, like a dual table stacked column, in that the arms come out and wide, and there's cables that attach. But rather than providing resistance via a mass, or you know, iron, or steel, a dumbbell or a barbell or weight stack going up and down, it generates the resistance via electromagnetic motors. And so that allows a couple of things allows us to be really small, it touches the wall, it's like five inches wide. And so you can can make it much smaller. But you can also manipulate or change that resistance in ways that you couldn't do against gravity. And so something might be let's say, You've, you've been in the gym, and you've seen someone attach change to a bar, you know, the put chains on there, when the change when you're down deep in a squat or a bench press, the chain is low, so most of the chain is on the floor. So the bar is relatively light. As you as you ascend, or you increase in your distance, more of those chain links come off the floor, and the bar gets heavier. Well, we can just do that with the touch of a button. You can manipulate the resistance and that's just one example but in many, many different ways. And so Home Fitness Equipment resistance training, it's a functional trainer, but created via electromagnetic resistance.
• 5:48
  And because we're connected to the internet, we can then do online coaching. We have a touchscreen TV, we have form feedback, we have computer vision on all these technology pieces to essentially bring aspects of personal training to someone in their own home.
• 6:02
  So do you mind like if somebody who is listening does So, you know, what is the like, you know, you might have seen those chains, like you've mentioned that that seem, but what is the purpose of using those? Your mind you have some studies or something like how, why that is important? Or what yeah.
• 6:24
  Yeah, so I think there's this, I take this in two ways, there's, and we'll get to why I geek out and you probably geek out, but like is the optimization like, what extra gains can I get? And so we'll talk about that, that, number one, we'll talk about that. Secondly, first off, what I actually find for general population is it's ways to provide variety, to keep people engaged, I think that's actually the biggest benefit to something in a home fitness device. There are physiological outcomes that are beneficial, and we can talk about those. But it's ways to keep things engaging and training, you imagine, you know, you're doing four sets of 10 of benchpress, for you know, twice a week, or whatever it might be, or, you know, for 12 weeks, it gets a little boring after a while the average person wants to stay cognitively engage some of these ways that we can manipulate resistance. Yes, they can be more effective in optimization, the outcome, but but also, they just keep people engaged. And they add a little bit of variety, not too much, but a little bit of variety, to keep people with kind of interested in training. So I actually think they're more beneficial to general population or as beneficial in that on the optimization side. So we have we have multiple different modes, but I'll talk about the two that I think are most well known and common. So that change mode that I talk about the research evidence behind that really strongly suggest it's a great tool for developing power, if you imagine you know, power out, you know, being force times velocity, you've got like speeding element and you know, resistance, we are strongest or most powerful at the end range of motion. But normally, we're slowing down right a little bit at that end range of motion, because we don't want to work to kind of extend ourselves too far, by adding an extra resistance so that we can intentionally increase power output, a maximum power output.
• 8:07
  And power output you might think is for athletes only. And it's certainly an important piece for athletes. But actually, power has probably got some of the strongest research evidence behind it for improving activities of daily life, for improving longevity, for movement quality, it's a really important skill, a lot of those sort of as we get older activities of daily living, like walking up the stairs, or power exercise is getting out of a chair. It's fought over a short period of time. So that's chains. And we have another mode called eccentric, which essentially is where we overload the eccentric or the downward portion of the move. When there's a lot of research around accentuated eccentric loading or eccentrics, in that we are about 25% stronger in that eccentric portion. So if I have to lift the weight and lower it, the maximum I can lift it is my kind of one RM Right, maybe that's 100 pounds, or 100 kilos, or whatever it might be. But I could lower it with an extra 25% 125 pounds or 125 kilos, we can essentially manipulate that.
• 9:07
  So it is it comes down heavier and goes up lighter. And so you can maximize strength adaptations that way. And there's a fair amount of research evidence suggesting that it's very good for maximal strength development. Maybe for hypertrophy, too, I would say there's a bit more questionable in the research, but there might be some evidence to say that it's quite booked for muscle growth. So those are two of the modes. But then there's these whole other bunch of modes that we can do, or we do do, we have things around spotter, because we're monitoring velocity and movement all the time, we can detect when you're going to struggle. And so we can, we can peel weight off, so you don't need a manual spotter or a human spotter. If you start struggling benchpress we can just reduce the weight we have something similar to a drop set, it's called burnout mode, where we take the weight off a little bit into start moving, and then we go again, and then we go yet every time you get to that sticky point, we take a few pounds off and so you can get this really good pump that might be very effective for hypertrophy, which is the idea that we can monitor training in real time and adjust to training in real time. Wow, that sounds amazing. Like also how many people are are a really like a if you are new or alone at the team you don't have a spotter or or something like like you mentioned like that you can you can go easily like when it's when you are not quite sure if you can, are you able to get that one more thing and with this new technology you are able to you can basically monitor all the time if I understood correctly. Like what is what is happening how much you are able to do.
• 10:47
  Yeah, absolutely. I think like I trained almost exclusively on terminal I work for the company.
• 10:50
  I'm wearing the logo, so you know take take what I say with a grain of salt, but like I worked out in my home gym with a squat rack and I still have one behind me before total but I'm in my home gym. My wife may or may not be upstairs. Do you think I'm squatting to failure? No, no likely right or even bench pressing to failure, I'm probably 345 reps away from failure because I don't want to get stuck because there's, there's no one to shout, you know, record a fail video of me in a gym like, I'm going to be stuck there for a while. And so what I found is my training actually, you know, I decreased the intensity a bit because I never got those close proximity to failure. And we don't need to train to failure all the time.
• 11:27
  But I think the research does suggest that going close to failure is probably a good thing for increasing your muscle mass.
• 11:33
  And so this really just gives me the confidence and our members the confidence to push closer to failure, maybe it doesn't need to kick in, but I have the confidence that I can go to that one or two reps from failure.
• 11:46
  And I know I'm going to be safe, even if I don't lift it the way or keep taking it off for me.
• 11:51
  Yeah, this is this is something especially working with a lot of women. This is something with most of the women are struggling. Usually, it's what I have seen, it's a kind of opposite. It's coming, they are probably overestimating what they can actually do. Yeah, they are too heavy. And, and the women are like, I feel like that it's all the time when it starts to feel heavy. They're like, No, no, no, no more. And the reality is that they could be easily, like he mentioned that do maybe five, six more reps, even if they think that now it doesn't, I can't do it anymore. And and this is just the kind of, I find it so fascinating as a secure way to go push yourself a bit harder and get closer to that failure. Like you mentioned, it's not necessary to go on the failure, but pretty close to it.
• 12:45
  So what is your, in general?
• 12:45
  What is the research suggesting?
• 12:51
  For how close to failure you should be going? As you said that, like we mentioned, it's not the goal to go aim for flame failure every single time, but at least sometimes to try it.
• 13:02
  And what is the what is the research for most documentaries?
• 13:06
  Yeah, yeah. So it's, I would say it's an evolving topic, even like, we've been researching strength training and hypertrophy for a long time. But I would say there's been two or three papers in the last year or two that have really, I think kind of expanded our knowledge, I try and condense it down, I think it's absolutely clear that you do not need to go to failure to get hypertrophy hype, like hypertrophy or failure is not essential for hypertrophy, so you can train. But it seems fairly suggestive that whether you believe in a hard or soft version of what we call effective reps, but the reps that are closer to failure, so it might be five reps, it might be six, it might be three, but relatively close to failure are more effective and stimulate more for hypertrophy. And then two papers, that one still a preprint, I think, and one that was released, one by a guy called Zack Robinson out of Florida Atlantic University, and one out of Martin fellow who I want to say is in New Zealand, or Australia. And so the preprint, whereby Zack Robinson, essentially, they took all the studies, and they sort of tried to estimate failure, because not every study made measures failure, or how many reps from failure, and they tried to estimate and so there's some challenges with doing that. But they tried to do a really comprehensive job. And they basically said it was a linear type of relationship between about actually about 10 reps from failure to 10 reps from failure, you start getting a little bit of hypertrophy and you know, nine reps a little more, eight reps a little more 7654321. And you got a little more hypertrophy in that research failure than you did beforehand. The Martin tin roof fellow study that came out a couple of months ago, they got that was on one single training study. And they did essentially, two groups, or I think it was within subject design. So one arm Did you know, failure training on one arm or one leg did two reps from failure training, and they saw no differences in hypertrophy between those. So my take onboard take on the research literature is that failure is not essential. It might be desirable on occasions for maximal hypertrophy. But if it is, it's probably a relatively small stimulus, it might be the last set of an exercise or of a day, it might be you know, not every training session, but some training sessions. I would I would, and the way that I plan in train most autonomous training, I'm looking for three, three reps, two to three reps from failure on the vast majority of sets, and then occasionally pushing myself on it mainly for what you said. So I know where failure is. So I know what that feels like. So I know I've got a reference point of knowing how how close to proximity failure I am. And so I tend to program most of myself around that sort of three reps from failure as being the sweet spot. And I think the research generally suggests that you know, between one and four reps, you're probably in a pretty good spot.
• 15:55
  Now, well said I totally agree.
• 15:55
  And I like to what I think like obviously every coach have a different opinion. I like my rule of thumb is like Close like two reps. That's pretty much laid out if you can imagine to do two more reps, that's enough.
• 16:14
  But if you are, you're getting Madsen to do more than try to do one more. But it's not. It's not essential to Paul on the failure, especially not in every state. But like you said, yeah.
• 16:30
  Yeah, I think it's also your goal, right? If your goal is strength, actual maximal strength, failure, you probably want to stay a bit further away from failure. Yes, you want to live with heavy loads, but you probably want to stay away from failure a little a little further for for hypertrophy, I think it is close to that. But I think it's also a related to your, the volume that you're doing. Like, if I was only doing let's say, I had no four sets per muscle group per week, which, you know, there is research that says I could make decent gains at that, I'd probably be more likely to push most of them to failure or very close to failure, then if I was doing 20 sets per muscle group per week, you know, just the volume of the piece comes into it. And I would say also, if I'm doing biceps, I'm pretty much go to failure, every set like it's a small muscle group, it's not that fatiguing. I don't get systemic or central nervous system fatigue, you give me three to five minutes, and I'm pretty good to go again. And so I'm going to take most of those, even if I'm doing 1015 sets a week, most of they're gonna be maybe one one rep from failure or to failure. Whereas squatting Yeah, I can't remember the last time I squat it to failure. And it will be a long time before I do it. Again, it's just you know, it's tiring, right? Even if I'm doing only a few sets, it's really systemically tiring.
• 17:47
  And so I think you have to think about when you think about failure training, you think about, yes, how far from failure, but how much volume are you doing? And what muscle groups are you working and the interplay between those?
• 17:59
  So let's talk about volume lately. So you mentioned that what is the what is the amount of sets per muscle group like?
• 18:07
  What is what what do you think?
• 18:07
  What is the most optimal for, let's say, someone poor athlete or normal team for beginner?
• 18:16
  Like?
• 18:18
  Yeah. Yeah, so I would say let's start with the hypertrophy researchers, as I understand it right now. And I'd say there are two meta analysis. One, they're both not that old. But there's been more research and I'd see I think you'll see a new meta analysis coming out. And a meta analysis is just essentially a study of studies all the studies in that area, and they pull the groups together to get bigger statistical power. And so the meta analyses in that that I would look towards would be Brad Schoenfeld from 2016 or 2017.
• 18:47
  And bears bass bow was in 2020, I think 2022 Maybe. And so essentially, we started to see hypertrophy growth, and actually, them relatively biggest increase with about four sets a week per muscle group. I think the Brad research showed that about 67% of the muscle growth or something is achieved within the within by just doing four sets per muscle group per week. So slightly bigger increases, if you did between five to nine. And in that research, they saw, if you did, you'd got slightly bigger increases if you did 10 Plus, but back in 2016, or 2017, whenever that came out, there really were not enough studies above 1010 sets per muscle group per week, to really give us a strong indication, the bizarre research came back then that they looked at it slightly differently. But they essentially found that between 12 and 20 sets is the sweet spot for maximum hypertrophy per muscle group per week. And so I would say those are the two sort of, I would say, meta analyses in that subject. So generally, I would say between 10 and 20 sets per week is where most people are going to get most hypertrophy from, but you can still get a lot of hypertrophy or muscle growth well below 10 sets a week. You know if there's any Mike Mensa fans in in your audience, but there's very low volume, you know, he was doing one or two sets per muscle group per week, and claiming now, you know, he was a Olympia bodybuilder and you don't know pharmacology and what's going on, but you can get good gains.
• 20:22
  By knowing that. I would also say there's a relationship between training frequency and volume that needs to be considered. So there's research that says generally approximately eight six to 10 ish sets per muscle group per training session is about the most you can get out of a stimulus of hypertrophy. So you might want to do 20 sets in the week, but you should only do you know up to a maximum of 10 maybe six or minimum or not minimum of six, but six to 10 sets in any given session. So that means you might need to train that muscle group two or three times a week to be able to get your weekly volume. And so that that would be would be hypertrophy, though was a study came out ends last year, that got a lot of social media they did. They started at 22 sets a week and then increase the the four sets or six sets.
• 21:16
  And they those guys ended up at the end of 12 weeks 52 sets a week of legs, which is extreme, and they saw greater hypertrophy, I would say that's a single study, it was really well done in my opinion was in resistance trained people they rested for longer rest periods, they did a lot of stuff, right?
• 21:33
  They showed increases. But that's, that's a lot, I would say the vast majority of people can maximize their gains between 10 and 20 sets of volume per muscle group per week for hypertrophy strength is interesting because it's more of a skilled learned movement, right. So when the more we do it, the kind of the better we get to some extent. So there is generally at least a frequency component. But we can get strong with with relatively low volumes. We don't need to necessarily do crazy high volumes for strength in order to be able to do that. But we want to train those lifts fairly frequently, particularly if they're technically challenging, something like a clean or a jerk or snatch or Olympic lifting.
• 22:12
  very technically difficult.
• 22:12
  Those people will train frequently, but won't train high volumes necessarily so little bit around what your goal is.
• 22:18
  But that would be my take no variable. So this is this is it comes to like an interesting point, like I was, I know how many listeners are like in that level of who are actually even close to get like, let's say 10 to 20 sets per week, because that is a lot of exercising like that to be realistically in that range, you need to strength training, like I would say, four or 567 times a week to get it's all to do that for every muscle group, the way that I like to think about it is I generally have a muscle group or to the specialization that I'm working on when I'm trying to get in that 10 to 20. And then I got maintenance volume for other things. And so I tend to like I do train quite a lot. It's my job. It's also what I love to do, but I train relatively short periods of time. But what we also see with some of the members that tonal is, yeah, I'll focus on a particular muscle group, you know, maybe okay, this this time, it's quiet until I'm trying to get 10 to 20 sets off my quads and but I might only be doing four to six sets of biceps and for the success of chest and you know, I'm so I've got these maintenance, and the research on maintenance volume. As long as you're not in a big calorie deficit actually says you can cut by a third, maybe a ninth of your volume and maintain your gains get very little decrease in in muscle mass. And so I can kind of put these muscle groups on maintenance, and then have a group that I'm specializing where I'm kind of focusing a little more of my volume. So it's a tactic you can use to maybe sort of near and not have to spend six training sessions a week in the gym, or six hours a week in the gym, or you can kind of manipulate what you're focused on for periods of time.
• 24:04
  And this is such an important point like, because it's so little what you need for maintenance.
• 24:08
  It's if you get one, two sets per week, it's you. You are pretty good, pretty good.
• 24:18
  And you're not likely to lose much at all, if anything, for a long period of time. Oh, yeah.
• 24:25
  And and it's the same thing.
• 24:25
  Same thing, like if you like you mentioned earlier, even if you are getting even four sets per week, per muscle group, you are likely to make relatively noticeable gains. Totally, yeah, I yeah, I would definitely take like something is always better than nothing. And the something that nothing to something is the biggest change in dose response. That's where you get the biggest gains. I can't remember what the exact percentages, but you know, it's logarithmic in its relationship in that you have to do a lot more to get a little more gains.
• 25:00
  And so yes, if you want to optimize, you want to be intended 20 sets, but you hit four to six sets per muscle group per week, and you're going to make and you're training relatively hard, you're going to make really, really nice gains for a really, really long period of time, in the vast majority of situations, and so, yeah, you don't need to do that. I would also say, you know, I've talked about strength and hypertrophy, but the health benefits if you were you're trying to, you know, decrease all cause mortality or death from cardiovascular disease, from cancer from from things like that. You can go to sessions a week, 30 minutes a time, you're golden. Like, like you're you're literally you've got the lion's share of your health benefits, cognitive you know, your lower lower instances of Alzheimer's Association's with lower lower risk of cancer of cardiovascular disease of pretty much anything and everything. Got a couple of sessions a week for 30 minutes, a session 60 minutes total, maybe maybe a little bit more, but not a lot. And you're you're super super in an awesome state.
• 26:05
  Oh, yeah. And this Sisters sisters, I hope we get this message out for so many people that it's it's that consistency with the strength training, it don't need to be like, what I what I hear and see a lot from people like when they are like that if I can't work out three times a week, it there's no point even why start? Yeah, yeah, we hear that too. And nothing could be further from the truth that first session, even for 20 or 30 minutes is the most valuable the biggest gains come from that one. And yes, there are incremental gains from doing more, but just do something and you will be in a better place for sure. We actually have some data from tonal I was looking at it the other day. So we broke all of our members into like, training frequency, like how often do they train and the average member on training is training closer to three times a week, and then they invest in our device and they buy, but we looked at them and the ones that train just like I think it was twice a month, once every two weeks still make something like 25% increases in strength over their first year. If you make that to once a week, it jumped up a little bit, you make it to twice a week and yeah, jumps up again. So yes, there are incremental dose responses, but that the minimum threshold for making changes really pretty small. And so yeah, don't, don't worry about not having the, the you know, I can't fit it in I can't fit four sessions a week, just start doing something is definitely a great piece of advice.
• 27:36
  I'd love to hear that. Because I'm all about limited consistency. And now, it's basically I'm, I'm living here in Italy, and it's it's in especially in the summertime now now, I hear from so many people that you know, at summertime, I leave my strength training, I focus on outdoor outside activities. And then I started in September again, and I always tried to somehow find a way to communicate it like that you don't need to make gains in a summertime but keep that habit up then do even it's a it's a one session per week, or like I mentioned even every other week event, it's a huge system systems per month you are you are maintaining everything you are possibly even even seeing some kind of progress. But the most like, the biggest values is that you are not going backwards. And you are able to even even you have a muscle memory, even you for some reason you don't do anything for your muscles. And when you restart everything you get relatively quickly back to the level where you used to be. So that's just that consistency is is so much more important in strength training, then kind of the perfection.
• 28:48
  Yeah, 100%. I think, yeah, if I could preach, one thing would be to stick with it and doesn't mean stick with it the same amount of times each week, but just have some stimulus in there, and you're going to continue to make great progress.
• 29:02
  One of the one of the other metrics, I was looking at our database the other day, I think I made a post on this was we were trying to find out, like what associations with people early in their fitness journey hold true, you know, month six and month 12. So what do they do in their first week? And can we see associations? Now this is correlation, not causation. So there's a difference between those two. So we can't infer causality doesn't mean that causality isn't there, it just means I can't confirm or deny whether it exists. And so we looked at the amount of training someone does in their first week of training, and how that, you know, what did, how much training do they do in month, three months, six months 12. And if you do more training, the first week, you do generally on average, have a correlation or association with more training later, later, three or six months down the line. But what I found was actually almost more interesting was, it's not what you do in the first week, you could start 20 minutes. But if you did a little bit more in week two, and a little more in week three and a little more in week four. So you had this kind of upward trajectory in the amount of time you're training and it needs to go on for the first month. That's way more predictive of being training engaged in training and but six months 12 to starting doing something and then adding a little more an extra set or two and doing that for a period of time. That was much more powerful as an association than starting with four hours a week and then you burn yourself out because you saw the kind of thing and you dropped down. Yes you want to do more is better.
• 30:30
  I'm not necessarily saying it's not but if you're worried about that just just an extra five or 10 minutes in week two, week three, week four and association wise I can't say causation but association was much better outcomes than than not then starting high and decreasing because you got too tired to saw ran out of time. Small steps make big differences. Yeah, no, this is this is I love to hear it. It is exactly the same how I have throughout my coaching career like I remember back in the days like I started coaching it's now It's eight years ago, I think. And I remember when usually when people are contacting goats, they are highly motivated. And then you know, the thinking process goes like that now, you know, when I'm when I'm paying for quotes, I better dig all advantages out of it. And then it was lated starting from zero and going for four or five, six lessons per week, and I was more than happy as a young coach to program somebody five times a week and that thinking like that, I'm gonna get selflessly a huge transformation Big Sur like only eight weeks and this amazing results and the hard truth was when the first two three weeks I never heard those clients anymore and they read that they quit, they stopped it was too hard. It was too much volume in the beginning and and now I changed my thinking process of this and I often encourage them to start a bit less what they realistically think people that what is possible so that if we start with let's say, you ideally you want to go for three times a week, what what about we start with two times a week, even a bit solar systems, and the first goal is to become keeping promises for to make for yourself getting that done. And then if it's week two, week three, and you feel good about it, it's actually fits into your schedule, you can you can do it, then it's time to add more at either a little bit longer since one more system. And if not, if you're happy with results, then we are good. We don't need to wait why to do more. If you are happy with the results and progress you are getting the by doing less. So this is this is a love to hear that this is there is actually the if you have a lot of data supporting this what I bought I have seen working with so many people.
• 33:01
  Yeah, yeah, I it was a data science. It wasn't me one. But it Christy, our data scientists that did it and it shocked me when I saw it makes sense, right? I think it is James clear and atomic habits talks about he turned up to the gym and just went home, he just did the drive and then turned around and went back and he was just getting used to it. That was his first step. He never even went in the gym, he or he went in the gym and you do one exercise and left it was just the getting the muscle memory of going to doing that. But yeah, hundreds of 1000s of people over. And these associations held true 12 months time from now, this wasn't all like if you do more in the first month, you also do more in the second now you make this increase 12 months down the line, we see these associations still. So yeah, that the minimum effective dose is real small. We don't have to do a lot of training, there are incremental benefits. I don't want to underplay them to doing a little more. But you can get a lot of the gains and doing that. And then yeah, if you if you just slightly build on this habit, form the habit and then build upon it, you're going to be in a really, really great spot. And our data suggests that Oh, yeah. Love to hear. What about you mentioned that about programming, like, later, it's not optimal. Like what I see like that those body parts, like you touch a little bit of your own own programming that you'd like to focus on one special muscle for a certain period of time and putting kind of everything else on a on a back seat or maintenance. And what is what what is your take on like, kind of the optimal programming, like what type of like was I see in social media? It's, it's a lot like now in the fitness space. It's, it's kind of upper lower kind of splits, post pull legs, all buddy workouts, what is what is? What is your recommendation? What do you think is the most like to do the it's the two big, big resume and hope but yeah, I get in trouble with someone by answering it. But some influencer, I think the optimal split is the split that you stick to and you like doing other than that, I really don't think it makes any difference.
• 35:07
  You want to do full body maybe I wouldn't do full body every single day five days a week. But you want to you want to do any combination, upper lower push pull legs, a bro split body part specialization split that I personally kind of like to do you like to do circuits like that. The research and paper again came out on this shows that it doesn't really make a lot of difference that like you need to be that if you're worrying about that you're in the one percenter are might as well go back to my Olympic athletes and trying to get the 1% the split for the vast majority of times does not make any difference. And so it's What do you enjoy? What do you like doing? And I think that's what you're going to like doing you're going to be more consistent with over time and then you're likely to get better outcomes from just being consistent. So I don't think there's an optimal split for pretty much any goal in particularly in the real world, because I think people will Oh, yeah, if they don't enjoy it, they're not going to do it, saying that I think there are some principles or heuristics, yeah, I don't like to train the same muscle group twice, within a short period of time, maybe 48 hours ish. The research on that and fatigue and training under fatigue is is much less strong than people make it out that you must wait 72 hours to hit a muscle group or get well, I'm not actually sure we have strong evidence to say that, but I don't really like to work it when it's when it's definitely very strongly for to eat, you're probably not going to get the same fiber recruitment, there's probably some mechanisms that are going on that are probably not optimal. So I don't like to kind of do back to back days have a ton of the translating training session. But other than that, I don't think there's a lot of a lot of research evidence and our data says people make gains all kinds of ways. And as long as they're consistent, it kind of that's the common thread. So yeah, I would say do do what you like to do, as long as it's relatively relatively sensible, don't hit same muscle group return, don't you know, don't start by doing tiny amounts of volume and then like, exponentially increased 300%, week to week now, that will probably like to come to injury relatively quickly. But as long as you have some sensible parameters around that, I don't think it makes a ton of difference.
• 37:24
  No, it's like you said it's a large topic. And it's basically it depends on personal preferences. Also, how your normal schedule is looking. I'm, I'm a big believer, like, especially, like, let's say you work three times a week, if it's Monday, Wednesday, Friday, for example, your workout days and I'm big believer of full body workouts right in this way. It's it's, I have seen tested because it's if you like what is often what I hear or see, especially the younger generation who is taking workouts from Instagram or somewhere it's there, like a push pull, legs split and that like you mentioned earlier, it's it's you get once in a week, basically per muscle group. And, and if you get it like even it's a little bit a bit less volume per workout, but you work out three times a week. I have found that it's it you people get more results. And especially for those like if you if it happens, life happens and you miss one workout, you still get one at least some sets some reps in for each muscle group because if you miss it's always the liquidator Friday. Something happening and you never, you never get your legs in. So yeah, I think that's a really sensible recommendation, I would generally gravitate if I'm doing three or less times a week, if I'm programming that it would probably be full body. But I really like your point there around like, if you do miss if life comes in the way and you do miss a session, you have still getting enough stimulus to at least maintain and probably still grow from the other two sessions. So you have your bases covered, which is sensible real world programming for sure.
• 39:09
  What about for athletes like this, you have a you have a very big background working with athletes, like if somebody's let's say somebody's trying to get faster, if it's whatever sport it's, if it's running, like I'm a bass rookie coach, and most of the players they want to become faster. So how what is your take on this? Like, what is the what is the training philosophy do for someone who wants to become faster? Yeah.
• 39:42
  Oh, I said principle specific adaptations to impose demands.
• 39:54
  So like this, the basically the rule of specificity is king of all. And so if you want to get faster and exercise, you need to train fast at that exercise. And I think that is the most powerful that you can do.
• 40:04
  Whether that's sprinting, hockey, skiing, doesn't really matter. Like you think about the neurological patterning and mechanisms and firing rates and getting specific motor units, you need to do that a lot. And so I think that is undeniable, from a strength training basis.
• 40:24
  You know, I would say we're working more on the fundamentals of like the underpinnings of, Okay, do we have enough muscle mass, like there is a relationship between the size of my muscles and the amount of strength or force that they can produce? It's not one to one it's not perfect. And just because you have large muscle mass doesn't mean that you are automatically strong, but it does give you like a bigger ceiling for strength. And when we're talking about power, or like, you know, a lot of what we have to for speed is on the power side of it, we have to have large points of strength with large breaches of of velocity. And so I would think about, okay, are they where is their weaknesses in their physiological profile? And so you know, if someone and is super fast and really, really bouncy Pop's can do pliers for fun, but can only squat bodyweight, you know, maybe, or something like that, then I'd be more thinking about in the offseason further away from training, hey, let's put on some strength to raise that ceiling or let's put in some muscle mass, if they're really skinny, do some more hypertrophy early in the season, convert that hopefully into strength, maybe in sort of the mid of the offseason. And then realize that potential in more of a sort of linear periodization kind of fashion, if that person is, you know, they're relatively fast, but they're more like, a running back in, in, in, in football, which there are some speedy players, but they do not need to put on muscle mass or stride had massive, they got 30 inch quads, and you know, can squat six times body weight, or whatever it might be like, then I'm going to be focused a lot more on very specific movement patterns for them. And understanding. Okay, well, where's where's the kinetic breakdown in their speed? Is it? Is that ankle?
• 42:01
  Flexion? Is it? And do they have this sort of the knee mobility to get into the positions that we need them to? And so I think you have to think around that.
• 42:11
  So the exercise should always be the number one priority. And I'm a big fan of never getting too far away from something like speed, even in the offseason.
• 42:18
  Like don't, don't go out and do max sprint efforts on the ice on the track all the time. But you should have elements of speed in now at all points. They don't have to be 100%, but 90 plus percent kind of efforts just to keep it you tapping into there, and then identify where it is that individuals athletes, where is their weakness, we'd, we'd work on something that we call like a gold medal profile, or in Britain, they call it what it takes to win. And you can kind of create this parameters for the athlete around, well, what do they need to be able to do technically, tactically, physiologically and psychologically, emotionally, and you can break down the components and, hey, they're not robots, you can't get everyone to perfect, but you can identify, hey, there's a deficit here. We may be, let's let's you know, fill that in a little bit, give them a little more size, a little more strength, convert that whatever it might be, or the opposite. They're really strong at this. And let's turn that strength actually into like a sustainable competitive advantage. Let's lean into that really, really well. And that's something that we also do. It's not always about working on weaknesses. But there is value in bringing them up to a level but if you have most of the athletes that which the top level, they have something special about them, right? They have something they're really good. Let's amplify that. You don't make messi a better soccer player by making them a better defender. You make Betty a better soccer player. I don't know how but but it would certainly be an attacking a dribbling and making his strengths even better. So there's a minimum amount, the way that I think about it is like feel the deficit to the minimum amount and then maximize what they're really good at and try and think about it that way. Yeah, no, I love it. I this is this was actually exactly the same thing. Mike was say, I asked from Italian national players like, I asked them, like, what three goals what they want to work on this and the summer of which often athletes, if you tell them three objectives, they tell right away their weaknesses, but I address it don't tell only your weaknesses. What is your strength to make you even more outstanding with the strength you have? Because that is the sort of medicine that is so important to be someone like you can do you don't need to do as an athlete, everything and be the, like, not the weakest in any part. But if you are really outstanding, in some part, why not to make it even better?
• 44:42
  Yeah, I mean, it really does depend on the sport. And it depends on the weakness. There is actually a research study by Mark Williams, does say that elite athletes, that they I think it was soccer players and they looked at like, truly elite people that are like greats versus there. And they did spend more time on individual practice working on their weaknesses. But it was relatively so like, it wasn't the messy spent hours on defending and I don't know if messy business research but like, it wasn't that he spent more hours on defending, but he wasn't quote unquote, the best at corner case or something. And so he spent more time on that weakness. So there is there but it's like, is that weakness?
• 45:18
  Like is it a competitive disadvantage? Or is it just something you're not that great, but it doesn't really matter?
• 45:24
  And it's identifying those Michaela Schifrin and Lindsey Bonner athletes that I've worked with in the past you know, they are they work on their weaknesses because it was things that were costing them race time. And so when it costs your race time yeah, you have to work on your weaknesses. But if it's not if it's just a skill that you're not that great at but it doesn't necessarily matter to your game or your particular kind of piece, then maybe it doesn't matter so much and I think you have to work on that but yeah, elite athletes should never never not maximize their strengths. I think that should be a component of their of their practice at all times is to maximize their strengths.
• 46:01
  No absolutely makes totally sense. They obviously depends so much on the sport like Again, if you are like a ski racer, obviously, if something is causing you can't finish your last 25% of the race because you don't have aerobic capacity. It's better to work on that and not not focused on that first 25 Like what is giving that kind of the importance of that understanding that whole event whole goal, what is giving more like kind of return for your what you are actually doing? So it makes totally, totally sense.
• 46:30
  Thank you so much, Ray. I, I think we could keep talking for hours as this is both very, very passionate about it. Would you mind telling little bit to my audience, about you where to reach out? Where to get Donal and what's what is it all about?
• 46:57
  Yeah, absolutely. If you're, you're interested in finding out more about tonal at our website, ww.tonal.com is probably the best place you'll be you'll be most likely greeted live with Lebron James, who's an athlete that we work with on the front page, but they can get technical specs about the device. We are only available in the USA right now. We hope to get to Europe at some point soon. But it's the normal challenge challenging not out not in my wheelhouse. But other people are working hard on hard on that. If you want to, like learn more about like just like how people use it and the members and that we have a Facebook community, the official Facebook, total community on Facebook, you can join just as prospects and you see real members talking about their journeys. And honestly, I find that the most heartwarming I spend probably too long in there. Like, you know, I was pre diabetic, I had type two diabetes, you know, I had cardiovascular disease and strength training has really helped me you know, mitigate some of those things or overcome some of those as part of a long holistic health club. So that's a really cool for some stories, and then yeah, I'm on LinkedIn under Troy Taylor and at strength science, Troy is my instagram handle where I post a little evidence based fitness a little tonal data, some training ideas. Yeah, stuff like that. So I really appreciate you having me on. Thank you so much.
• 48:14
  Thank you so much. Sorry, and definitely go check out the tonal choice, LinkedIn, Instagram Bates and I will put those all too soon also, you will find that links from there.
• 48:27
  So thank you for listening and talk to you soon.