In this podcast episode, the hosts analyze a leg specialization routine by Peary Raider, a influential figure from the golden era of bodybuilding and founder of Iron Man magazine. Published in 1955, the routine was designed as an add-on to a full-body plan, performed three times weekly. It includes six exercises: flat foot barbell squats, stiff-leg deadlifts, and heel-elevated squats arranged in a specific alternating sequence, with sets typically around 10 repetitions. The discussion focuses on the exercise selection, particularly the inclusion of stiff-leg deadlifts for hamstring development—somewhat uncommon in programs of that era—and the potential biomechanical differences between the squat variations. The hosts explore the historical context of training with limited equipment, comparing it to modern methods that utilize more machinery and specialized exercises. They also debate the broader physiological benefits of multi-joint exercises like squats, which provide diffuse muscular stimulus, versus isolated movements for targeted hypertrophy, emphasizing how training goals should guide exercise choice.
Welcome back everyone to another episode of high perj-v pass and present. Thank you all for joining us Chris. How are you doing today? I'm doing well thanks Jake. It's so much nicer to be doing this first thing in the morning instead of last night. I'm definitely not a night owl. So it's good to be back on the other side of the world. If you're tinned, we all know you're not ill. I made the joke last time that it's kind of like displaying darts on a on a clock of what time we're going to be doing it. So we've held true to that and we've picked another totally random time today. So next time is probably going to be my midnight who knows, but a bit of fun. And I'm not going to do another French park program today. I was going to pretend that I was, but I didn't want to expose you to that. So I'm sure we'll have another one in the future. But today we have a we do actually have a plan that we have talked about the author before. But it's been quite a long time and we've only talked about one of his plans in the past as far as I'm aware. So that is Peary Raider. Now I gave him a little bit of a bio last time we talked about him, but basically he was the founder of Iron Man magazine. And he was the contributor of the author of the owner of Iron Man for very long time decades. And Iron Man was one of the most influential magazines in both the silver and golden era of bodybuilding. There was obviously a couple other competitive magazines of that time. But a lot of kind of more, I guess you would say advanced or specialization techniques or kind of cutting edge type methods that were being used a lot of them were coming out of Iron Man. So Peary did do some interesting work even with things like isometric training like he was talking about that pretty early on. He was talking about sort of rest pools and cluster type sets, similar methods we talked about last week. So a lot of more creative type methods were coming out of some Peary's work. Now the plan I want to talk about today, this was in one of his books and not actually in Iron Man magazine, but in a book that he published. And it was a specialization phase and I've mentioned in the past where the specialization phases worked. Is that we're usually done as part of a full body plan. So this was a leg specialization routine and so you would add this onto your full body routine, you would take out the legwork of that full body plan. And you would add this in instead. So I'm not going to talk about the rest of the full body stuff because that would be what have a plan you were following. I bet this is a leg part of that plan. So it was leg specialization. It wasn't just crores or hands or glutes, whatever it was the entire leg specialization. I believe it was published in 1955 his book, the Iron Man Bible course book. And as was generally the case for Peary and a lot of people this time, he was recommending full body three times per week. And so this plan or this specialization would have been done three times per week. So we've got six exercises and although they do double up a little bit, you'll see what I mean. And we started with a flat foot barbell squat. We then went into a stiff leg deadlift into a hilt elevated squat. And then we went back into this stiff leg deadlift back into the flat foot squat and then back into this stiff leg deadlift. And that was it. Now it's an interesting order like it's not he didn't just repeat three exercises, you know, one time through and then a second time through. It's a change of order. And I think it's an interesting sort of I'm interested to hear your thoughts on it because I think that there's some intuitive decision making in that. But as far as sets and reps goes, he did recommend about 10-ish repetitions. He was a little bit flexible with repetitions and a lot of his work. He would sort of talk about the double progression and usually starting at 10, going up to 12. And then dropping back down to 8 or 9 or 10. So there's a fair bit of flexibility there. It's somewhere around the 10 repetition sort of mark. And he did say that some people may struggle doing this a third time per week and they may actually get better results in a twice a week instead. What do you feel about that? So I guess first thing is to notice that we do have a deadlift variation and a stiff leg deadlift variation of that, which is different from a lot of the other programs that we looked at in the past where for some inexplicable reason. We tend to not see those types of exercise, which I always thought was strange because it's like one of the simplest because we're dealing with a period of time in which we don't have access to the machines and all of the equipment that we would normally associate with this kind of activity. So it's always surprising when you look at the silver era and you're like where are the deadlift variations? Because you've just literally got a barbell on the floor. You should be picking up a lap off the floor. So it's cool straight away just to see that we've got that. And obviously with it being stiff leg, that's also pretty cool because it does definitively give you that hamstrings stimulus that you wouldn't get if you started to have a bent knee variation whether knee is extending. You're not going to get the hamstrings really contributing very much. So straight away you can kind of look at that and go, okay, we've got a nice program that's going to have a decent chunk of the glutes and quads in from the squat side of things. And a decent chunk of well, a duct magnus as well, obviously. And a decent chunk of duct magnus and hamstrings in the stiff leg, deadlift variations. So from a kind of holistic lower body point of view, yes, I can see why you might build a program around those two exercises. Now, from our perspective today, would that make the most sense? Probably not because we've got so much more machinery that we can access, that we can train lots of different things in different ways. We've got a lot more understanding of how the lower body is going to respond to those different exercises separately. But ultimately, I think if you were to just start with how can I build a program based on a couple of barbell exercises, that would probably be a really good start. Now, if I were writing it today, they would say to me, you literally just got a barbell and you've got a right program for the lower body, I would probably have a hip thrust or a glute bridge in there as well. But fundamentally squat, stiff leg deadlift and hip thrust, I think would be fantastic as a lower body program built around barbell exercises. Obviously, still, those two is a really good step in the right direction. But I'm interested to see why you think that the ordering makes a difference because I'm not seeing that. What's stand out to me there? Initially when I saw it, I was like, "Man, you've made this confusing for the sake of being confusing." Why not just keep eating it? Yeah. But what we've got, so we've got the flat foot squat twice, we've got the hills elevator squat once. Then we've got this stiff leg deadlift three times. It's interesting that we've got one variation for the hands, and that hashing exercise is going to be repeated a third time. But because we've got two quad exercises, we're doing one of them twice in the other one once. So he still managed to evenly split the volume, the six sets across both hands and quads, by making the ortee exercise waiting uneven, if that makes sense. I would be interested to hear what you think is happening with the change in the foot position on the squat, because my gut feel, I don't think there's a lot of data on this, but my gut feel is that it's not changing a lot, really. I mean, it might change the relative involvement of the hips and the knees a little bit, depending on the resulting position you end up with. Do you have an image of that? I don't, because he used sketches, and they were not necessarily that helpful. You describe it at all. I don't have the description in front of me. I'll come back to you on that one. Unfortunately, it'll be a part two. The image I have in my mind of his little sketches are that the elevated squat was very low. I do believe he made the instruction to go effectively as low as he can without the amount of grounding. Now, I forget how deep he was suggesting the flat foot squat, but that's my understanding with the heels, Elvator, was that would be a very deep squat. Possibly more knee dominant. So, I mean, actually, my recollection as well is his heels were together, I believe. Yeah, I mean, my gut feel is that that type of squat was targeting more quadriceps and less hip extensors. That's my gut, you could argue, it might be something equivalent to dropping between a back squat or alternating between a back squat and a front squat. Something like that. The idea is that you're shifting a little bit from hip extensors to knee extensors. Now, honestly, I don't think that, well, I think for most people, most of the time, the back squat is still going to be a knee extensor dominant movement, no matter what you do. I think there are situations in which people can turn it into a hip extensor dominant movement, just about, but I think it's borderline. So, honestly, I don't see an enormous difference between those exercises. Do you not think, even if that's true, by doing the heels elevated squat, if it was, you know, he was saying he was keeping the torso very vertical and nose a lot of knee bending that exercise, will he be potentially getting less glute than he would be doing in a flat in how we would assume he'd be performing a flat foot squat? I'm not sure whether I would say less glute specifically, but I think it's likely that there would be a ratio difference, definitively a ratio difference of hip extensors to knee extensors between those two squat variations. Yes, I think you'd get more knee extensors to hip extensors ratio in the heels elevated squat than you would do in the back squat, just under back squat. So, if that heels elevated squat were another flat foot variation, considering he's got multiple sets of a hinge movement in there. Yeah.
tip one over the edge a little bit. Well, I guess what I'm saying is I don't think it's going to make that much difference either way. Honestly, given that he's doing a hinge variation anyway, I would probably back off on the hip extensor dominant squat variation. I would probably just move towards a more neat dominant. Yeah, so he could have actually done more of the heels. Yeah, he's doing at least one more sense. Yeah, sure. It would make more sense because she would probably use less load for a deeper squat, which is a very beneficial situation for those guys who are operating with minimal equipment and having to use lighter loads in order to be able to get the barbell in place and those kind of things. So I think practically speaking, it would make more sense to me to just go all in on the deeper squat, which is more quadriceps dominant with the heels elevated or front variation or whatever you want to do and separate the two out and push in different directions. And I think ultimately that's that's kind of what we've always been talking about with Neuromachineical Matching with exercise selection. It's like this idea of you know, figure out what it is you're trying to train with the exercise and go all in on that thing because that'll get you the best results for what you're actually doing. You start spreading out the stimulus across larger parts of the body. You're not going to get, especially when you're already training those other parts of the body with another exercise. Well, that's the assumption. If you were doing that, then it could make sense. Like I like the idea of having a back squat in, even if you were then to have a leg extension or something that's a little bit more quad sort of more isolated because you're getting that broad stimulus and you're kind of getting that you know, diffuse stimulus for parts of even the lumbar for whatever that you might not be getting into. This is a question that you and I have talked about offline a number of times, which is this idea of saying, you know, you've got, you've got the purpose of the exercise, which is a particular muscle group or even a muscle within a muscle group. You know, you do that exercise for that purpose. But then some exercises like a squat, especially and the deadlift, right, pulls things like that. They train other stuff that we don't talk about because it's not like a clearly defined muscle group that we're kind of targeting. It's just kind of like somewhere else. Like you're standing there with this ridiculous weight on your back or you're pulling a ridiculous weight off the floor. There's stuff being trained there that you don't see on your list of muscle groups that you're targeting. And I think there's a really interesting point. You know, and I know you've done some kind of anecdotal or data collection on yourself on the way you're saying, well, if I take squat out of my routine, how does that change my body composition? How does that change the way I look? You know, I think that's really, really interesting kind of ideas where you're saying, look, just standing under that ridiculous heavy barbell puts a hypertrophic stimulus on small muscle areas that we just don't list out on our target muscle groups for the purposes of bodybuilding training. But it still creates muscle mass increases over time. And you see these little lean mass increases, which you can't really pin down to being in one of your major muscle groups that you're training. And it's literally just because that exercise places large chunks of the body under load that aren't necessarily, you know, kind of clearly definable parts of the body that we're training for bodybuilding. And I think it's really, really interesting kind of idea where you say, you know, yes, on the one hand, we are training, you know, specific muscles and isolating that, isolating the wrong word, but targeting that with specific exercises that do specific things is usually the best approach for the purpose of growing that muscle. But equally, if you're talking about whole body muscle mass increments, that's a separate question. That's where you might want to just have one or two of these big kind of exercises in there. If that's your goal, but again, are you targeting shape? Are you targeting muscle mass? Are you talking in particular? Look or are you just, yeah, are you just literally wanting more muscle overall? These are separate questions. Everybody's got to answer their own question for their own purposes. Yeah, it's almost the fact that an exercise like a squat, for example, a back squat, the fact that it's not the best quad builder is exactly in my opinion, what makes it a valuable exercise. You know, or a dead liberation, the fact that it's not necessarily the best hamstrings or whatever is what makes it valuable because you're getting that diffused stimulus. And I think that one critique I would have of how I see a lot of quote unquote, science based lifting nowadays setting out programs is a lot of the time there is an emphasis on these, you know, just purely single joint exercises, uni-lateral exercises, exercises that are using quite minimal loads. And there's sort of a, you know, overlooking, I guess, some of these more multi-join exercises or these exercises, like you've explained, there might just be actually provide these similar muscles we're not actually thinking about. Totally. I mean, there's obviously a lot more muscles in the body than we tend to list out when we're doing bodybuilding training. But again, I mean, you can get around a lot of that by better exercise variety, which is something we'll come back to later on. It's just, you know, it's just a very useful kind of, and you know, this is something that I do a lot when we're talking about problems and trying to analyze them. It's just trying to widen the perspective and go, am I seeing the entirety of this problem, or am I just kind of, you know, only looking at tiny part of it? And I think what we're just doing here is trying to widen our perspective briefly, take a step back and go, what is the bigger, you know, kind of sort of perspective here? I'm talking about squats in this context. There's a really great example of how we can widen our perspective and go, you know, yes, we tend to talk about training specific muscles and the best ways to do that. And that's totally valid, but that doesn't mean that something like a squat with a more diffuse stimulus isn't doing something interesting that's worth thinking about. You know, I'm never going to argue that a squat is a better exercise for training the quadriceps than something that has less total muscle mass. It's just not going to get there because the most cheap criminal levels aren't going to be high enough to compete, but it's still doing something interesting from a different perspective. But again, depending on the person, you know, if somebody has a particular look that they're going after and that diffuse kind of stimulus doesn't serve that look, then it's not going to work for them. Whereas if somebody is literally just going, well, I, no, I don't really care about the look. I want the muscle mass across the whole body. And that's what I'm interested in. Then actually then something like a squat is really interesting to include in your routine because it's going to sort of get parts that other exercises can't reach. You know, it's just going to kind of sort of load things that you wouldn't otherwise be able to load. I think a record probably does something similar, but from the opposite kind of loading direction. Yeah, those are the two exercises I use in my plans for that purpose. I'll normally include at least one, often I'll include both. My personal favorite weighted program and a lot of my plan of you'll think this is to have, if I say I'm doing full body AB, to have one day which is all just those single joint exercises and another day which is basically just these multi-join exercises. I think that's the best of both worlds. And for me looking at it's kind of very regi-par combined with Steve Reaves. Steve, we've talked about his plan, where it was multiple exercises, per muscle, single set. A lot of it was biasing particular parts of the muscle. And then we look at a lot of regi-stuff and a lot of it's behind the neck pressing and bench pressing and squatting and these big multi-join exercises. And I think as we take both, mash them together, I think we've got a pretty good plan. Yeah, again, depending on what your particular goals are because I think the look will be slightly different, you know, I think. But ultimately, you know, it's just again about just saying what physiologically is happening and then, you know, what do I want and then putting those two things together and letting the physiological reality serve the goals that you're trying to achieve. But yeah, just widening our perspective and trying to sort of see what the possibilities are that are available to us. The last point I wanted to make in these plan is I would have loved for there one of those stiff leg delis to be remaining in the lift. If we had that, I'd be quite happy. And you're kind of not shaking your head, but you're not, you're not sold on that. Tell me what? Well, I'm not sold. The reason I'm not sold on it is I'm always a bit. So before, before we came on the podcast, we were just talking through a whole range of different ideas of what we could talk about and not necessarily in this podcast, but in future podcasts and we've got, because we've got lots of, lots of interesting things floating around in terms of ideas and topics that we've been working on talking about. And one of the topics that we've got lined up as something to talk about is this idea that multi joint exercises often have a certain amount of variability in them about where the stimulus is actually going to end up. And that can vary between people, you know, and it just kind of is one of those features of neurochemical matching. And for me, when I look at the RDL, I'm always kind of a bit uncertain about where the stimulus is going to go. And so straight to way, I'm like, you know, is that a reliable exercise that does the same thing in every person? No, it's not. It's going to do something different in different people. The back squat is kind of like an RDL, but a little bit more reliable in this sense that you kind of know where the stimulus is going to go. It's going to go to the quadriceps and the adoctomagnus and the glutes. And it's kind of, yes, you're going to get a quadriceps stimulus as your priority in most people most of the time, probably not in everybody all the time, but most people most of the time is going to be a priority, a quadrilimiting factor is going to be the quadriceps. And then you're going to have the adoctomagnus being the primary hip extensor and the glute is just going to kind of help where it can. And that's going to be more relis applicable for all people. RDL, I'm like, well, yeah, it's going to be some adoctomagnus, then you're going to have some glute in there. And then do I get a bit of hamstrings or not?
probably not, and maybe I might see it at some parts of the movement. And then there's some quad in there as I'm starting to stand up. And it's just messy. And again, it's like, is that messiness, that diffuse nature, something you want? Okay. Or is it something that I don't want? My gut feel is that stiff leg is almost always better. And the reason I'm going to argue that, finally, my key point there is that I don't think that you're going to get so much more load on your RDL to make it worth not doing a stiff leg. Because I mean, that's where you're going to go with it. It's going to be like, if I can do much more load on the RDL, that justifies me doing that for the overall diffuse nature. No, I don't think you're going to get much more load either. No, I don't. Whereas if you were to argue rack pull with me, then I would be, I would be much, much less versiferous because with a right where you can go crazy, you can put some silly weight on the bar with a right pull. And then you're going to get some really interesting diffuse stimulus, whereas the RDL is not so much more in terms of absolute load than the stiff leg. I'm just thinking of what my numbers were. And I don't think I would be more than, you know, 10 kilos more on an RDL compared to a stiff leg, maybe a little bit more, not so much that it would be really visible, like noticeable. Whereas rack pull, you're just jumping up in terms of loading, you know. And so suddenly your diffuse stimulus is just way, way higher than it would be. So if you want to make the case for rack pull versus stiff like I'm all ears, but I don't think the RDL is that much better. No, I agree with that. I wasn't going to be my logic with that. And I agree with what you said there about the stiff, about the rack pull. My preference in any of these Hinging exercises is actually a stiff leg rack pull. And again, I use that for the perps of this diffuse stimulus, but also getting a decent hamstring stimulus. But the point I always going to make is we've got multiple sets anyway. We've got multiple sets of the stiff leg. And if we're going to do these, you're laughing. We can all hear you laughing. I'm laughing because it's like you kind of lay a stiff leg rack, but it's like you want to do all these like I want all of the possible, but what exercises they not can send such a good exercise in my opinion. Huge fan. And I don't know why people don't do it more, but my outlaw this, yeah, would be if we're going to do multiple sets, as you've just pointed out there, okay, the RDL not reliably getting much hamstring work. Yeah, I can maybe some dependent person, whatever, but it's not as reliable. The stiff leg obviously is going to be more reliable. Now, if we're taking some of that hamstring work from this stiff leg and we're taking it out in the RDL, well, that central mode of command is going somewhere. So I'm not looking at it saying, well, it's reliably a group build out reliably, whatever. I'm looking at saying, but I'm going to be doing something that the stiff leg isn't necessarily doing. And if we've got these sets to play with, we're going to get more bang for buck, but adding a third set of a stiff leg, all by adding one set of an RDL. But again, if you're arguing it literally and those are my only options, then I agree with you, but I really don't think they're not doing it. Sure, the hip thrusts didn't exist at this point. Sure, but rack pulls did and I think rack pull would be my preference. I think that that will probably be an equipment thing because they would be having to do that off blocks. Sure, sure, but yeah, nah, that's fair. So I would say, you know, today, I would absolutely have the hip thrusts to maybe the rack pull as today, but it looks quite different. Yeah, and it was just going to go back there, then I still think a rack pull would be better than an RDL for the purposes of it. But again, I agree with you, if your only options are either don't do the RDL or and just do stiff legs or do the RDL, then I would say, yes, you're probably right. It's a little more variety is going to be better than just continuing to do the same thing all the time. I agree. And again, as you point it out, there's not a lot of low difference. So for me, it's like, well, hang on, you can, you don't even need a chain of set up. You just do the same thing. You pick up the bar and you just bend your knee or you don't bend your knee. So you don't need blocks. You don't need a rack. You don't need anything else. That's why I would look that. I think just why wouldn't you do that? Why wouldn't you do that? Yes, he could have done that on the middle one so that it was pairing with the deep, you know, kind of squat and it would have had more symmetry in the program and been more aesthetically pleasing to look at. Yeah, I get it. I get it. It's just, you know, I guess for people listening to this, you know, the point here is that what we're trying to do is understand how physiology is changing the out of the training program or the workout that we're doing. You know, we're not trying to bring dogmatic program kind of approaches to the table and argue them. We're literally just looking at what we think the exercise will do in terms of physiological reality and discuss why we think one approach might be better than another. And I think just to repeat something that I've said recently a few times on this podcast, you know, I don't have any objection to people arguing these ideas, making cases for different things. Sometimes people will message me on Instagram and say, you know, I think this is, you know, potentially the case in this particular exercise, but I've heard that you say it's not and I don't want to upset you. And I'm like, just make the case. I get that I get people asking me that about you. Chris has said this. It's like it doesn't matter. Just if you think the physiology, you know, argues in that direction, make the case. And if you're missing something, I'll tell you, you know, but it might not be that you're missing something. You might just be making a good case for it, because physiology is messy. There's all kinds of different options. Hopefully this idea about diffuse stimulus today is making that point because at the moment, as we were saying a few minutes ago, you know, a lot of people are really going to town on this idea of, you know, localized stimulus to maximize motion and current in specific tissues, which is absolutely valid. But that doesn't mean that a diffuse stimulus doesn't give you something that that other approach isn't doing. You know, so it's all about making a case for what you think is valid. And that's totally cool, as long as your referencing valid physiology that exists, that you're not kind of making stuff up like metabolic stress. I mean, that's where we go off in a different tangent and you start talking about stuff that doesn't exist. As long as we're rooting stuff in things like Motu unit recruitment and false velocity relationships and if team mechanisms that have been shown to exist, that's cool. And everyone can make their own cases for things that they think that's important or the other things more important. Fine, no problem. Just don't make stuff up. That's the key thing. Yeah. I often get people ask me, you know, or you put this exercise first, but I wanted to put this exercise first or so and so. So you said put this exercise first. So either they'll present me the few different options or it would be like, you know, based on this and this, which one's right. And my answer is generally to them, look, there's not a right or wrong. It just explains to me why you chose that option. And if someone can't make a explanation as to why they chose that thing, that's really flagged. Right? Like for me, if I'm putting in exercise first, sometimes I put a compound first, a multi joint first. Sometimes I'll put a nice laid exercise first, a single joint. Like it doesn't this not a black and white. This is the only way I do it. It's sometimes I'll choose to put a multi joint last. I'll put a squat last because I know that the amount of super-spinal CNS fatigue that's going to cause is going to mess up to rest their workout, especially if I'm doing higher repetitions with it. Whereas other times I might be doing a classed method. I know there's not going to be a whole stack of super-spinal CNS fatigue. I want to focus on voting unit treatment. I'll put that first. It's not right or wrong, but I've got a justification as to what's happening physiologically when I do that as opposed to someone saying, "Oh, you know, I've heard you, one must always do this." And then I just think through what's happening physiologically. That's it. That's the difference between having a set of dogmatic rules that's like you must do this in this way, otherwise you're not doing it properly. It's not, no, it's not about rules. It's about principles. It's about physiological reality. And absolutely, the example you just gave is brilliant. It's like, yes, sometimes I might be doing a specialization for a particular muscle group, but because the exercise that I prefer to do for that particular muscle is really demanding from a cardiovascular point of view. I'm still not going to do it first in the workout because it's going to cook me for everything else that I want to do. So it's like, yes, on the one hand, I should be prioritizing it, higher up my exercise order, but equally, I know that I won't get anything else done if I do that first. So it's like you've got to make a decision and say which of the variables or which of the problems or circumstances are most important to you at that particular time. Or change things. I mean, again, there are other options like we were arguing with direct pull versus the epitome versus the RDR. I mean, it's like there are other options available to you. And if you stand back and widen your perspective a little bit, you might see an approach that you haven't seen before. You might consider variables or factors that you haven't thought about before. And it's all just about thinking things through and referencing the physiology at each step. Now, I feel like we could just keep talking about this and make this a topic in and of itself, but we did have a different topic we wanted to talk about. Do you want to introduce a highly related topic really? Because the idea we had for this podcast was talking about specialization and what factors or variables we want to consider when we're talking about specialization. So essentially when we were discussing this, I said, well, you know, potentially we've got sort of four major variables to think about and probably there's probably other things as well, but this kind of four major variables to think about. And they kind of separate a little bit into two kind of broad categories. So on the one hand, if you're doing a specialization, you want to make progress as fast as possible. Like, I mean, that's kind of what we want. We want motivation. We want, you know, kind of that sort of C progress. We want to be moving forwards quickly. And we want to get the end of the specialization phase and feel like we've accomplished something. So we don't have all the time in the world for this. We want to dedicate a period of time to it. So rapid progress is the name of the game. Equally on the other hand, you know, we also want to reach our maximum potential for that particular mushroom. So I think we've kind of addressed this idea before as either difference between greater growth and kind of like
ceiling on growth. So you've got to kind of think about these two things separately. And these training variables are kind of fit into these categories. But ultimately, you know, on the one hand we want to see rate of growth, but on the other hand, we want to see maximum possible growth. Now in terms of maximum possible growth, possible growth, as we said before, you know, we want to hit the highest possible level of recruitment that we can. And we also want to hit all of the possible areas of the muscle that we're trying to train. So we don't just want to be training one particular area of a muscle repeatedly and expect to gain maximum muscle mass for that area. Sorry for that whole muscle group. We want to learn you're going to get it for that one area. So we want a large amount of exercise variety. We also want the maximum level of motine recruitment. Now just to kind of link that back to what we were saying, you know, a few minutes ago, that's kind of the approach that we're seeing a lot of on social media at the moment where people are doing kind of ten different exercises for a muscle group with all kind of different isometrics and you know kind of partials and things like that, which is cool. I mean, it's great to see people experimenting and playing around with the new mechanical matching ideas and emotional recruitment and that kind of stuff. So, you know, the idea would be if you want to specialize, you do need to have a really high level of variety, but by a mechanically different variety. I mean, like one of my kind of examples that I give when I do the mentorship program and I see to people one of my great frustrations with reading bodybuilding kind of programs as where people will have three different biceps girls, but they're all basically the same biceps girl. You know, they all have the exact same muscle length and joint angle peak force and all that kind of thing. So it's like they're just changing between barbells and dumbbells and stuff like that. It's like that's not by mechanical different exercise. You want a fundamentally different kind of exercise if you want to have true variety in your program. So you're a decent amount of variety. You got high levels of recruitment. Again, the recruitment stuff is about minimizing muscle mass. It's about, you know, picking your motivational techniques that you might have, whether it's training with somebody else or whether it's the music, you're playing whatever it might be. You've got all these kind of techniques that you can kind of group into that category and we can talk about that later on. But then the other hand, you've got stuff that's going to affect your rate of growth, which is kind of essentially your frequency and your volume. You know, you're going to need to have reasonably high frequency if you want to make rapid growth and you're going to need to have a decent chunk of volume in each of the sessions. Now volume doesn't have to be for every single region. You can volume eyes by like we were talking about previously in other episodes. You can volume eyes by having different kind of exercises for the same muscle group overall. So your volume might actually just come from your large exercise variety. But again, on the variety side, when you're looking at frequency, you wouldn't want your variety to be spread out too much across the week. You'd still want your variety to be kind of within your high frequency template. So, you know, whether you're training every other day or whether you're training three times a week, you want your variety within workout rather than across workouts. So, you know, we're not picking a different exercise and doing, you know, ABC for body hours. People keep asking me if they can do and that's one of the few things I get a bit dogmatic about. People say, can I do four body ABC, if I, and then insert reasons? And I'm like, not really. It's not going to work. So, you know, kind of want, I would say, an specialization to have high frequency with with your high recruitment and your high variety within those single workouts of your program. Actually, most of the time that's going to take care of your volume issue because if you're doing a decent chunk of variety, you're probably going to find that you're doing three or four exercises for the muscle group. And that's probably bringing you up against the top end of your volume, kind of workout volume, if you're using those moderate loads. So, I would say that's my intro. That would be my kind of starting point as a framework for a specialization. What does that sound like to you? It sounds, I think that's a very helpful framework to be talking about. There's a few points there that I think I think you're going to touch on them anyway. But what's coming to mind for me is, and you mentioned at the start, you know, is the goal here, the speed of growth, or is it the potential capacity of growth? And whenever I hear people talk about the specialization type phases, what's going through my mind is, are you just doing something which is giving you short term adaption, which you're going to lose when you then go back to whatever you were doing before. And some of what you've outlined down, I know you're going to go into more detail, has the potential to do just that to give you a short term adaption while you're doing it. And then you go back and you lose it. And some of what you've outlined there has the potential to give you an adaption that's going to persist into future phases. And I think for people who do specialization phases, this will be a helpful thing to be a wealth. Yeah, absolutely. So in terms of moturing recruitment stuff, if we do small, mass mass exercise designed to target very specific regions, and similarly, if we do exercise variety that's designed to target specific regions, and we do those for only a short period of time. So let's say, for example, you pick a, I don't know, maybe you you are doing some kind of sort of single arm row or single arm pull down or something. And that gives you a level of recruitment that you can't get with a two arm version. Then when you then go back to your subsequent kind of full body routine that doesn't have those single arm variations in you are going to lose a little bit of a level of recruitment that you would be able to achieve. You'll drop down and you'll stop getting the same level of stimulus and you'll start to see at your career current quite quickly in the most fuzzy and not training. So the flip side to that is that by training with that higher level of recruitment, you have actually increased your level of recruitment. So on the one hand, you're not going to lose everything, but you are going to lose something. You took two steps forward and one step back. So of course, the better approach will be to try and find a way to, you know, kind of keep that level of level of recruitment by continuing to do that single limb variation, but that isn't that easy. You know, you might have to just accept that in certain situations you are going to lose a little bit, but you've made some gains, you know, in the interim. Now there's all kinds of complicated ways you could try and avoid that problem, but fundamentally most people with normal levels of motivation to find that they aren't going to want to do single limb single joint exercises for every part of the body all the time, not saying that those people don't exist. I'm sure they do exist. I'm just saying that most most people aren't going to fall into that category. I certainly don't. So, and the same problem you're going to get with exercise variety, if you have some kind of very strange exercise, not strange, but uncommon exercises that you introduce into your program, and then you take them out again at the end of your specialization phase, you are then going to see loss as a result of not incorporating those things to assert the degree. Now again, new mechanical matching tells us that if you increase the size of a muscle, almost a region, then it will have a bigger leverage and then contribute more to other stuff. So if you, for example, were to do a glue specialization phase, you would find that your glue then did get involved in other stuff, not the stuff that doesn't use the glue, but it will get involved in other lower body exercises to a greater extent. So if you were to do a lot of hip through a single leg, glue bridge, that kind of stuff, and then you were to go and start reducing the amount of direct glue, whatever you did, you would find that your glue still did more in your RDLs, in your squats, in your leg presses, and other kind of things as well, simply because it now has better leverage than it did before. So you get the same carryover that you would get or do get from the recruitment improvements that you made, you get those carrying over again into your subsequent training blocks, and you're not going to come out too wise as well. In that example, so I like that example because I look at that, say I've got a guy who can't build their chest, and it is like no matter what I do, a bench all the time can't build a totally flat. What I would do in that situation is take out any kind of benching and I would do something like a peck deck, and then I would achieve some pick growth, and then I would potentially go back to benching, unlike you said, the leverage will be a true stupid. It depends how extreme that leverages are. Yeah, yes, and you might modify the bench, the technique a little bit to try to make a little bit more chest dominant, whatever. But say you got someone who they weren't limited in the development of that muscle, they just were choosing to do a specialization phase anyway. Maybe they're actually somewhat chest dominant anyway in their benching and dressing movements. Then is the change in leverage going to achieve anything really that meaningful after that specialization phase? Interesting question. I mean, if the chest is already the limiting factor, then I don't think you would get a qualitative difference. I think it would fundamentally still be, I mean, you still would still be training the chest to pretty much the maximum extent that you can. I don't think it would change things fundamentally. I know somebody's splitting hairs, but why say that is because if you were quite developed in a particular muscle, then having that excise variation for a short period of time might not really be doing much of anything for you. Yeah, I mean, the this then again comes back to this idea of, are we talking about an excise in which the prime mover, the limiting factor is variable or not. And the bench press is a great example of one that fundamentally is extremely variable. You can move around the relative activations of the three major muscle groups. So if somebody is very triceps dominant in the bench, then you can shift them possibly with some excise variation as you were saying wider groups and that kind of thing. And some chest focus work, you could shift them to being just dominant in a particular bench pressing variation as a result of a specialization phase. And that would then change what the bench press did for them really, which is interesting because you just changed how they're then going to respond to training, whereas I think with other excises, I mean, the hip thrust is the best example really. There is no scenario in which you're going to convert the hip thrust into a.
I don't want to exercise, it's not going to happen. It's just not. Yeah, and that's why, you know, when sometimes people will be like, "Oh, I can't grab my glutes and I've got poor mind muscle connection. I don't feel my glutes in a hip thrush, but I've filled them in whatever I should do that instead." And in my head I'm like, "Well, no, because nothing else is moving that hip thrush load for you, even if you don't feel it." But conversely you could have someone in a bench where they're like, "I don't ever fill my chest. Should I do something else?" Yeah, probably. That's actually an option or an exercise where there might not be a lot of chest stimulus fee. Yeah, and I mean, I think this comes back to them just, is there any other data that you can gather that will help you assess what your kind of limiting factor is in exercises like the bench press? You know, and you might want to just look at your numbers for different exercises. I mean, I always say to people, you know, if you've got an absolutely monstrous dip strength and compared to your bench press, you'll probably try to search dominant. If you're a bad press, especially your bench. It's the same as your bench thing. No, right. Yeah, if you're a bad press, it's getting similar numbers to your bench press, then again, you probably don't dominate in your bench press. You know, whereas if you've got an amazing bench press, but you're over head pressing in your dip relatively weak by comparison, you're probably just dominant. So it's just like, can you gather some data that help you kind of benchmark where you are in terms of relative leverages, and that will then tell you probably what the exercise is doing. Another thing you can do is test your bench press variations. So like if I do a relatively close grip bench press, you know, straight away, I can, you know, so I get a certain number. And then I try and move out into a wide grip bench press. And my number absolutely tanks. And it's because I'm seeing the loss of triceps involvement. So I'm a very, very triceps dominant presser. So as soon as I take my triceps out of the equation to a certain degree and limit their capacity for contribution, my bench press just absolutely drops out the sky and just disappears to nothing. So again, you can kind of play around with these kind of tests and see what you think is likely to be the limiting factor, not saying these are hard and fast rules that are going to give you perfect answers every time. It's just indicative in addition to this idea of, oh, I'm not feeling this muscle. But, you know, what do the numbers tell you about what you're capable of doing in these different exercises variations? Do the numbers tell you the same story? If you're not feeling the muscle and also the numbers tell you the same story, fantastic. But if the numbers tell you a completely different story from what you're feeling, it might just be that your brain isn't feeling it for some other reason. So that basically kind of, we kind of digress to the thing we started talking about. What happens after a specialization phase rather than what's happening inside the specialization phase? I'm kind of spiraled into an exercise selection. But, you know, when I set out the original framework, I suggested that we've got the kind of the recruitment side of things and we've got plus the variety side of things, which kind of more or less direct you to where you're going to get to eventually as you point out correctly, assuming you carry on doing those things. And then the alternative sort of side of things is then the volume and the frequency which kind of determines the rate that you're progressing at. So in a specialization phase, you would never really want to kind of do what a lot of people do. And, you know, I'm going to get all kinds of messages after I say this, but I'm going to say it anyway. A specialization phase does not mean doing one extra day per week while you focus on the muscle group you're interested in training. That's not a specialization phase. I mean, so many people come to me and they go, I'm doing this three, this four body workout program three days a week and then I'm going to do an extra day where I do arms. And I might do that is not how are you going to make progress on a specialization phase. Not going to work. Okay, there's not going to do nothing. I mean, that's just kind of be specific here. I mean, so many people kind of want to, as you point out earlier, make things back and white. It's like it works or it doesn't work. Or it works perfectly or it doesn't work at all. No, no, no. It's just not going to be the best approach. Specialization is where you, you know, you as the silver ear, and this is another great example of silver ear bodybuilders getting there first, you integrate the specialization into your existing program. So it's like you, you include it in what you're already doing. You replace what you're previously doing for those muscle groups with these new exercises that are designed to give you a greater overall stimulus. Now, not just a greater overall stimulus in terms of the rate of growth for the specific muscles, but also the areas and the level of accruing that you're achieving. So this is where you kind of come back to this idea of exercise order. We talked about this already doing things first, you know, and trying to kind of maximize the accruement with other techniques and maximize the variety to get everything you want to do. But then the frequency and the volume are then overlaid on top of that. So we're doing stuff as frequently as possible. So either over the other day or we're doing it three times a week. And then again, volume wise, we're going to try and push up against our limits a little bit to try and make sure we're getting the maximum possible stimulus. Now, I don't think unless people have got very high work capacities or are extremely patient and have the thing else to do all day, that they're going to probably really hit their top levels of volume. I think that, you know, if you're working with heavier loads or isometric and things like that, you're probably going to run out of energy before you run out of recovery capacity really. But with moderate or moderately heavy loads, yeah, you probably limit three or four sets per muscle reposition. So that's kind of the sort of the context that we tend to see the data. Can you expand on that same thing you made a moment ago, do you literally just then we said, unless someone had all the time in the world that they're probably not going to hit up against their maximum? Well, if you look at the data we've got for recovery, we've got really good data. As I say to people all the time, we've got data for certain things and we've got less data for other things. So we've got really good data for how long it takes to recover for different numbers of sets of moderately heavy loads or moderate-ish loads to failure with conventional kind of squat, like breast bench press, that kind of thing. So mainly stretch position exercise. So you can kind of draw a line through those, those number of sets per workout per muscle group and you kind of get three sets as you recover within 48 hours, five sets, over within 72 hours, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You get a nice straight line running through those sets right the way up to about 10 or 12 sets taking about, you know, six, seven days to recover from. We don't have the same collection of data that you can draw a line through for heavier loads, straight away if I were to say I'm just going to use five-rent maxes. I don't have data that will tell me how long it takes to recover, but we know that if you use heavier, I mean, I've got a table that I didn't so well as an infographic agent ago and everyone went absolutely crazy about it because it showed that you could do 20 singles and pretty much recover the following day. I mean, and that's, that's an extreme example. Ultimately, five-rent maxes, you do kind of see much, much higher volumes being recoverable from within 48 hours. It's not going to be three sets, it's going to be five plus. So okay, so you're saying if one wanted to maximize the within session stimulus, then potentially where they do that would be doing sub five-repetition sets and then you could potentially do four. Yeah, and that's even before you start leaving a rep in reserve, which is going to help. And then maybe, and again, you've got people doing isometrics, which is even less problematic than they have you load. So when you start scaling this stuff, and that's why we're starting to see people on social media doing like 30 sets per session of isometrics, that's that wall because she can. Have I got the patience for that? No. But I'm not in the business of trying to compete on that thing. So this is the point. I think most people would run out of patience and motivation and energy before they run out of recovery capacity if they started to move in that direction of using heavier loads. Yeah, and it would have to look very specific, which is, but it would have to look different from it would look different from what we're seeing most people with most most kind of training programs, which to be fair, solve era stuff, most of the time they're using moderately heavy loads by which I define six to 10. You know, that's kind of the zone that most of them are working. And if they go higher than that, it's an equipment issue most of the time or whatever. It's a practical concern. But where possible, they're kind of training in that kind of moderately heavy zone. And that's kind of where, you know, I train that's where I see a lot of people training day, but of course, because the physiology is allowing people to take advantage of this great to recovery capacity with heavier loads or isometrics, people are moving in that direction, which is, which is really interesting because again, like I've said multiple times on this podcast and before, you're using the physiology to open doors to new training opportunities. Fantastic. I think that's really interesting. I mean, we talked about the Alan Stephen plan a few weeks ago. And I think he was doing 25 repetitions and that was with the five rep max, I believe. And he was doing that essentially like a cluster method type thing. So you know, it was basically you would take shorter experience and you would do kind of, it was sort of up to the individual, how many repetitions they would do. And they just had to hit the target of 25. Now, obviously, if you're doing moderate loads to get 25 massively simulator repetitions, you know, we're talking at least five sets. That's assuming there's not even any fatigue that's occurred realistically, but we bought six plus sets, which just wouldn't be recoverable. Yet he was doing these 25 recovery. If we reference the moderate load data set that we've gone from the ground, this is it. Yeah, he's using heavier loads. And so he's not running into that issue. I don't think that most of the time, if people are programming in a way to limit fatigue, then they won't probably hit that upper session limit in terms of recovery ability before they hit their energy limit in terms of just getting everything done. Unless they're literally just going to be sitting there in the gym all day, or they've got their own gym and they can just kind of do a dog hat burn and wander over and do an exercise and then wander back and have a drink.
of milk or whatever in there, whatever he was doing. I don't know, orange juice. And then wander back and do, you know, sort of another set of something else. I mean, like, sure, if your whole day is just like playing around in your gym, then potentially that's doable. But most people are going to want to go to the gym, spend an hour doing what they want to do, and then go and do the rest of their life. And I think that's kind of where the moderate load or moderately heavy load kind of sort of silver here, a bodybuilding program really comes into its own and where the kind of the other sort of stuff, which is totally valid, starts to become a little bit harder to maximize. Yeah. And that didn't phrase that properly. What I mean is, yeah, okay, hang on. So I'm not implying that you can't, yeah, I'm not implying stimulus maximization. I'm talking about recovery capacity maximization. So it's almost as no relevance, really. What I'm saying is that is quite easy to pump up against your top end of your recovery capacity, doing moderate loads to failure. You're going to hit that with three sets. You probably aren't going to hit your recovery capacity to failure. Sorry, you're going to hit your top end of your recovery capacity, training with heavy loads, either to failure with one rep of your reserve, or with isometric. It's just you just don't have time in the day or the energy to get through a whole workout where you're doing that for all your muscle groups. I don't think is this just a technicality? I mean, does it really mean anything? Well, I'm just pointing out that depending on how you stretch the program or approach you take, workout volume may be something that you can't really push very far, or it may be something you can actually push quite a long way. You've made a distinction there between between stimulus and recoverable volume. And I wasn't going to push you in that earlier because I know it could be a bit of a rabbit hole, but you made that distinction yourself. So do you want to tell us why you made that distinction? Yeah. So ultimately, I think that with moderate loads to failure, training full body three times a week or every other day, you're going to max out your recovery capacity before you max out stimulus. So workout stimulus probably maximizes around, I mean, this is very roughly somewhere between six and 10 sets per workout. Do you think that's all the case if you were to be training with these heavier loads, low rep sets? I think I do because I think that a big chunk of that plateau is the not the fatigue causing that issue. I think it's literally a stimulus situation because it's a really, really flat plateau at that point. So ultimately, I think that we probably don't reach that stimulus plateau when we're training with three sets to failure with moderate loads as we see in the data sets that we've got. So ultimately, you're hitting a recovery maximum rather than a stimulus maximum. If you were training with heavy loads, we've seen, you know, you can do a whole bunch of fire at maxes, start leaving a rep and reserve here or there or start throwing some nice metrics in and you're probably going to hit, you know, six, seven, eight sets worth of stimulus before you hit your recovery capacity limit. And so ultimately, you've kind of maxed out your stimulus really by doing that rather than maxing out your recovery capacity. But again, that's between session recovery that I'm describing. That's it. In that scenario, right. You've actually got junk folly. You could end up with some junk folly, yes, absolutely, because you kind of go off the top end of your, yeah, but you're still recovering, but you've got some junk folly. You're still recovering, but you've got junk, I've never thought about it in that end of the extreme. Right. But if you then start, say, well, can I do that for every single muscle group? Well, some super humans might be able to, yeah, but I mean, I was a long way away from what I can do. You're going to find that that's just insane amount of exercises and sets and reps that you're going to need to get done is going to push you to sort of three hour style workouts, which you know, we've seen examples of in the silver era, you know, and so like if you're doing literally nothing else and you lock your phone in a safe and don't look at it to take the social media kind of thing out of your head, then you might be able to get to a point where you can start to construct a life around the gym, you know, I'm just kind of pushing the boundaries of the thought experiment here, but I think, you know, the problem you're going to face is the within session fatigue, not the between session fatigue. I see. So this is even the week of the hop-up question. I see. Beyond the time, I mean, I guess the pattern parcel aren't there, but if you look at some of the like the class method we talked about last week, I think it's feasible. You could use a method like that and actually get say, you know, 25 maximumly simple landing repetitions per muscle and sure that might still be a 90 minute session, but I think you could probably do it some two hours. If you were being quite specific about, you know, using a five-grap max load, 30 seconds between your repetitions or however you want to do it, I think there's there's ways you could potentially make that a little bit more time efficient. Yeah. I mean, I think we're starting to describe, you know, extremely rare-ified, you know, scenarios here which are kind of not really applicable to the vast majority of people most of the time, but you know, it's just interesting to just follow the physiology and see where it leads you. And as I say, I think there are people who are traveling this route already. And I've seen, you know, kind of signs of this on on on social media, where people are kind of saying, well, you know, if I can do, you know, all these isometrics or all these heavy load sets, maybe concentric only sets and not create, you know, post-work-after-t. Then I can just do all of this work and it's like, yeah, but the work starts to add up and then you get to these two, three, four hour workouts and it's like, well, at what point in that two or three, four hour period did you cease to actually get high levels of recruitment because you just could. And again, that then comes back to this dog habit, an idea of splitting stuff up a lot more and taking a lot more time between sets and between exercises and, you know, maybe you start separating your workouts into three separate daily chunks and you're doing different body parts and different. Well, I mean, that's a good point because we've given some examples of where people split into two. I think maybe we're a Clancy Ross one, maybe we split into AM and PM and registered that as well, but there are actually some silly relifters who at least appear as a time that would actually do a third workout per day as well. And like you said, that might actually be if you lived in the gym, if you had the time, that might be a more intelligent way of doing it. Yeah, and again, you've got to look out, you know, what you're doing during that day and you want to make sure that you least damaging stuff earlier in the day because you wouldn't want any kind of inflammatory response to kick off, even if it was a small one. I mean, if you're portrayed training in these ways to minimize post-work-after-t. You're not expecting to create meaningful amounts of muscle damage, but you might get a little bit say six days to hours post-workout because the less damage you create the earlier it kicks in. You kind of like you're going to watch the timescales of these things, but yeah, you could kind of pick, you divide your entire four-body workout into three chunks and you could say we'll do the least damaging stuff first and then the next second and then the most damaging stuff last before you sleep and then you find that by the time you get back to your gym, the following day off wouldn't you be four-body. So you'd have the whole following day to to dissipate all of that and then you start again the day afterwards. So, you know, I think that there's ways around that. But again, you know, we're describing extremely unusual, you know, kind of training program here. I'm just pointing out that, you know, this physiology-based approach to strength training is about trying to understand what's happening, you know, it's not about because ultimately this is the difference between, and I don't know if many people realize that they're doing this, but when the current, so the current trend is for people to call themselves science-based lifters. Now, interestingly, that's changed because only a year or two ago, people were calling themselves evidence-based lifters, and that has changed. There's been like a shift in terminology, and I don't know how many people who are using these terminologies realize how different those two things are. Now, I've had it, I've talked about this before, I've explained this before, but I'm just going to say again, evidence-based approach is on what you do if you can't do science, okay? So, evidence-based means basically you run a study to see what happened when you do something, and you get the answer out, and it's an outcome, it's an objective outcome. So, you say, what is the evidence that "ex-technique does my result?" And you have a bunch of people, and you give them x-technique, and you get why result, or you don't get why result. That's evidence, yeah? Science is going what does x-technique actually, that's really interesting, essentially, evidence and outcome are almost synonymous. Yes, so you choose yourself an outcome-based lifter. Well, that's what the evidence can be used in which we're talking about outcome. Yeah, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. But yeah, so long-term outcomes of a particular trial are your evidence. So, if you look in the evidence-based medicine segment, or you look in the evidence-based physiotherapy or evidence-based, string training or evidence-based, whatever you want to look at it, all of it is doing is saying, "We don't know what's happening." That's what evidence-based framework, sorry, evidence-based framework say, as an assumption, I mean, they don't say it because it would be embarrassing, but they kind of assume that they don't know what's happening. They go, "We don't know what's happening, so we're just going to test whether this thing has this outcome." And if it does, then we're like, "Oh, yeah, there's evidence that this thing does this thing." Okay? So, this training technique does that thing. Well, this training technique is better than that. So, when people are talking about, for example, there was that whole period of time, a while back where people were talking about range of motion in string training or muscle length in string training, they're going, "Oh, the evidence states that longer muscle lengths are, you know, kind of give more hypertrophy than shorter muscle lengths during string training exercises." They're literally just collecting a numbers studies and good.
We've got three or four or five or six studies showing that longer muscle links about it in the short to muscle Thanks producing our surgery and we're just looking at outcomes and that's evidence based framework for you science Based says how is this thing working? What is happening science bases going well? We think that Titan is producing passive tension that's producing so I can say oh And you basically try and figure out what's happening and then you apply that to your Situation to understand whether or not your outcome is gonna be better or worse and what we've seen over the last two or three years And I've been kind of really hammering this day in day out is that the scientific approach is absolutely You know kind of smashing the socks off evidence based approaches for strength training at the moment You know science based approaches are predicting what's gonna happen and they're getting you the best answer and they're Fitting with the silver era bodybuilding training programs and everything is like you know fitting together relatively nicely And as a result, I think we're starting to see people talking about site But they may not necessarily know that science is different evidence, you know They may not know that a science based framework is a completely different animal from an evidence based framework But it is and it's really interesting to see people calling themselves science based lifters and actually using physiology to understand what is happening And then predict the outcomes of a training program based on that understanding because that's what science is It's an understanding of how the world works evidence is not it's literally just saying well, we've noticed that this thing does this thing You know, it's like well, you know, we think that does that thing because we've seen it happen But you don't actually know how it happens. So you could be looking as if it could be irrelevant You know my observation is that people who are using this term science based lifting I think they largely Do understand this distinction because what I am seeing is actually a lot of people who claim me science based lifting status Almost depicting themselves as against or oppositional to evidence based That's pretty cool. That's interesting. Yeah, and maybe this is a bit more of a tick-tock phenomenon Like it's something I'm seeing a lot there and maybe a little bit less on Instagram But I think people are aware that there is a distinction and I mean you did a podcast on this what at least a year ago whenever it was And that was probably the first time for me. I'd become aware that oh there is These distinction that people started to talk about you know I hadn't like you said people weren't calling themselves science based lift lift is at that point or you know I don't know when it started for me. I feel like it probably started when you and Paul did that podcast But I don't know if if maybe that was just I was living in a cave Maybe I hadn't noticed it, but certainly has become much more popular over the last years So no, that's interesting. I don't know. I mean it is just it is definitely a thing at the moment Definitely seeing an enormous pushing that direction of terminology, but again not everybody may realize that there is a difference there And not everybody may realize that the mainstream academia of strength training is still in the evidence-based framework for now I mean that's why I think there's a lot of conflict I think that a lot of the people who have traditionally been evidence-based I think maybe that's why there's a lot of pushback against new science based lifters because they are Realizing that there's there's a disconnect between those two things. Yeah, that that's why you know When people make fun of some of the figureheads of the evidence-based strength training community when they make fun of them for saying You don't know why you know kind of long muscle-lengths cause more hypertruism than short muscle-lengths We don't know we don't know they keep saying we don't know it's like what science-based lifters may not realize yet Is that we don't know as state-to-buy-never-n-space practitioner is the foundation of their faith It's the foundation of their starting point is the foundation of their framework They have to start with that because otherwise they can't implement evidence-based approaches because they would have you would always do science instead because science is better You would never do evidence-based if you could do science because science is always going to give you the better answer And you would never do science if you can do engineering because engineering is going to get you better answer than sciences Because engineering has all the science baked into it already So ultimately when people are you know kind of seeing these figureheads saying oh, we don't know why we don't know why you know or You know it's like they have to say that they have to say that because otherwise you would default back to science and you go We actually we do know you know and that's what a lot of the influencers are now starting to do this saying when they're hearing people say We don't know how strict we did our purchase we work like we do actually it's just And that that then what you've got is two groups of people talking past each other because the evidence-based people can't hear that Information and that's really interesting, okay? Because they actually can't hear it you can say it to them and they'll just literally I'll just go straight over them because if they heard it Then they would realize that what they're doing isn't applicable anymore because if you have a science Based explanation for something then you don't need evidence because science gives you the answer Evidence is a second kind of option for you if you can't do science And I think if people could just understand that then I think we would see it even more of a conflict happening I mean ultimately I'm I'm chill about it because it doesn't affect me But I think there will be potentially a shift as the next generation of Exxi scientists go into the academic community and they're expecting to do science and the existing communities trying to get them to do evidence-based Approaches and they'll be a conflict there as the younger people going through start to go well No, we want to do science we want to understand how Titan is affecting strange media. I've heard me We don't want to just keep doing random studies yet again testing whether or not Long muscle-lengths cause more muscle growth in short muscle-lengths and then adding them to the list of studies you've already got And then doing a meta-analysis because that's what's happening You're just doing study after study after study and then they do a meta-analysis and that's evidence-based That's all just evidence-based tactics where science is trying to figure out what actually happened You know and that's again why you've got these disagreements between people who go well I've got 13 meta-analyses that show that you know two times a week is the same as three times a week And I'm like dude physiology tells me that can't possibly be true. So I don't care how many meta-analyses you've got Because I'm not doing evidence-based practice. I'm not trying to construct a whole you know kind of list of studies And then arguing about I've got the most studies with the best statistical significance in the most meta-analyses And I don't care you know because I'm not doing that. That's not the game I'm playing and Gradually what we're going to see I think is as the younger people come through into the academic Community and they want to do science instead of doing evidence-based approaches that will see that starting to be a conflict And then as you know, there'll be a resolution and they'll find a sort of some kind of approach To go for it and hopefully they'll lean more on the science side But you know I find human dynamics fascinating as you know I mean, it's just really really interesting to watch. Yeah, definitely. I mean is T. Talk is kind of like the wild wild west, but it's really interesting seeing that shift amongst younger lifters and the the way they have embraced science and seeing that power dynamic shift from you know What used to be seen as a previous authority which was evidence-based and like you said when that Give it a few years when those people are starting to enter the the actual you know academia and research labs It's going to be an interesting thing to observe for sure Yeah, and you know ultimately science is a better tool for establishing the answer to these questions You know it will always be more attractive to people now I think the confusion arises is where influencers try to confound the two and they try and use Evidence-based terminology when they're talking about science and vice versa So you know there's a bunch of influencers who they'll present themselves as science-based But then they'll start using evidence-based tactics and they'll say well, you know all of these experts agree on this matter or all of these studies Say this thing or this matter analysis says that thing. Well, that's all evidence-based tactics It's all ever based framework. It's all evidence-based approach science doesn't care Whether you've got a thousand experts who all say the same thing science doesn't care whether you've got a hundred Metronoloses that all say the same thing doesn't care all that science does is describe what is actually happening And if you've got an understanding of what's actually happening and your metronoloses say something different Then there's something wrong with your metronoloses and if you've got a thousand experts all say the same thing and one Expert says something different but the expert says something different actually understands what they're talking about Then you're other thousand experts are wrong. It is literally doesn't matter. It's like either is or isn't you know We've got a lot of evidence-based stuff being used as if it were science and I think this can be interesting to watch whether people can see that Over time as they start to notice that a lot of their science a lot of the older more established And I don't think this is true about the younger generations at all as you say I think the the Wild West of TikTok is definitely literally just arguing ideas, which is fantastic You know, it's like is this true or is it not true? Whereas I think where you find with the older generation and the more established people they kind of they're the ones that tend to go Oh, I've got 13 metronoloses that show this thing and I'm like I don't care. Tell me how it works Because you can't because she don't know because you're not doing science. She's doing evidence-based approaches Now whereas you got another person who's like this is how it works and the physiology works like this and this is happening And then this is happening and it's like yeah, that's exactly what's happening clearly because that's just Physiology and I think that's the really interesting kind of dynamic There was time to see and that's ultimately the cause of the drama that I was part of last year Which I really knows about where it's ultimately came about because you've got evidence-based people saying you know Oh the metronoloses show that this is the case and then the science approach says well, that can't possibly do So what's what's the problem with those metronoloses? It is interesting because someone who is evidence-based Is in going to accept the scientific explanation because that's not evidence necessarily Destroy the framework that they're living in well that too. Yeah, literally you end up like you said you end up speaking Pass each other because you're not speaking this
same language because what's actually meaningful to one person is meaning less to the other person. Correct. The evidence-based framework assumes that science can't give an answer. It has to, otherwise you wouldn't use it. That's ultimately what it was designed to do, was designed to step in and solve a problem where it goes back to evidence-based medicine as the beginning because at that time, and probably arguably, I'm not comment on it, but potentially obviously, we don't have the Star Trek level technology to be able to do science at the level that we would need to do to understand how every single medical procedure and medical treatment is working at the time, and whether that's true today is a separate question. You know, so evidence-based medicine came about because it was like, "Okay, well, what can we do instead?" Or, "We just test stuff and see what happens." And then we accumulate evidence for an against-particular treatment. And then you incorporate that into other areas, but you don't need to do that in strength training because science is already doing the answer for you. I mean, that's a really good point. It's not, I don't know if you're saying this, what I'm hearing is not necessarily that evidence-based is, you know, quote unquote, "add" or "wrong," anything like that, but it is a second option when we don't have it. It's a portion cart in the age of the automobile. It's just simply out data than the necessary. You don't need it if you can do science. If you can do science. And because for me personally, like, you know, if I look at say, you just talked about medicine, if I look at say some of the stuff on say supplementation or functional health, and some, there's some huge holes in some of that literature, and to this extent that I think we probably can't actually understand some of that stuff the way we would want to. And we do, I would say, have to rely on evidence-based outcomes in some of that stuff. And so I actually personally use that language. If for myself, I'll use language with being science-based or evidence-based, depending on what the topic is that I'm talking about. So in my mind, I'm making that decision, and I'm actually acknowledging at points in time I'm being evidence-based here, because either I don't know the science or I don't think we actually have access to that. Totally. And there might be terrains that you can't use a vehicle on, and you have to use a horse. I mean, it's like that, that's just how it is. It's like you can't go there in a car. There's no road. So you're on a horseback, and that's exactly the same situation that we've got here. It's like you can navigate this terrain, using evidence-based framework, because that's the only one that's going to work. You can navigate this one using science-based framework, so let's use that. And I think ultimately that's kind of the way I would urge people to consider it. Now, I'm interested to see where this goes, whether people pick me up on this, whether they just ignore it, or whether they argue about to be really interesting to know. But that's the way that I think it works. So be interesting to see what other people get. Yeah, it's just in see what the reactive videos are that we've seen the coming week. Or more likely, 10,000 word articles. To go back to specialisation phases, what if we're not coming so far? I think we're there, actually. I think we've got that. It's actually not hugely complicated. We just break it down into component variables. We've just got the variables that affect the way you're going to get to the maximum level of kind of muscle mass that you can obtain. It's just going to be down to recruitment and the neuro-conocamaching side of things, the variety. And then on the rate of growth, you've just got the frequency and the volume. Now, frequency, we're kind of baking that in as being three times a week or every other day. And the volume, then, was the longer version that we had about whether you can actually maximise workout volume or not, and depending on how you might approach it, and all the various kinds of ins and outs of that particular question. But yeah, that's how I would visualise it. Now, I'm not sure that then lends itself to a lot of different approaches. They're all going to have the same kind of characteristics. They're all going to be training a high-verage size variety with a high degree of recruitment multiplied per week. Beyond that, I think there's probably a number of ways of baking the cake. Would you say, depending on someone's experience level, maybe, so if I'm looking at a beginner, well, a beginner shouldn't be special, shouldn't I? I would say I'm not going to set a specialisation phase to a beginner. But say you've got someone who is a little bit earlier on in their lifting journey, then perhaps a goal of a specialisation phase for them will be predominantly increased in this bead or the rate of muscle growth in that muscle. In that instance, arguably, the volume, frequency, where you place that exercise in that workout is going to be more important than necessarily a higher exercise variety or some of those variables that are going to be more important for total muscle mass development. Would you think, for someone who's maybe more to need it compared to advanced, maybe the specialisation phase might look a little bit different? I don't know. I think you could take an advanced specialisation phase and it would work for anybody. Because ultimately, you're dealing with the most limitations in that scenario. So you have to overcome all the hurdles, you have to fix everything and make it work for everybody. So I think you can take more stuff. You can say that about anything advanced, really. If it's done correctly. Now, generally speaking, the industry historically has thrown all kinds of rubbish at advanced people that doesn't work at all. But yeah, the way we think about advanced people, yes, the advanced programme has to be perfect because otherwise you're not going to make any progress. And so it will work for the same person at a lower level of advancement. Yeah, so you can kind of get away with more mistakes, if you like, or compromises at the intermediate level. But ultimately, the same principles are still going to apply. My argument there, and maybe this comes down to how long someone's choosing to specialise for. So in my head, I'm thinking, you know, eight weeks, a million days lines, that's what I would sort of regard as maybe a somewhat standard duration for specialisation phase. But to other say, maybe some people do much longer. But whatever. I don't think there's a lot of value in doing a whole less than that. How long would you normally prescribe a specialisation phase for? Well, I'm not a huge fan of them, to be honest. And I think it depends on the individual and the circumstances. I think I look at specialisation phases where, you know, people clearly have a problem that are trying to solve. So I don't like specialisation phases where people just go, oh, I'm going to do a specialisation phase because I feel like it's a, well, really, you know, why? Just carry on doing what you're doing, working and you're going to make gradual progress across the board and everything's you're not rocking the boat, you're not messing things up. Whereas, you know, if somebody's like, you know, here I am clearly, I've got a serious, you know, kind of lack of this particular development. And I, yes, I agree with you. And it's like, okay, how do we fix that then? And then actually you've got to kind of start with, because the chances are that that person has got a deficit in that particular area for a specific reason. And the reason, if they are training with a degree of rigor and intelligence, the reason will be because they have no leverage. Yes. So you actually then have to look at your exercise selection, you have to figure it and do the things that we've talked about. You have to get your exercise variety on point, you have to get your motor unit crewman high for the specific areas that you're trying to train. And then you have to train that rigorously multiple times per week for a period of time. And you'll notice what's happening. And when it stops, when it gets to you to the way you want to go, you stop. How long is a piece of string? Well, that's where you're going, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting sort of scenario context where one might ease specialization phase. And it's probably not. I think a lot of people think that that's them, but I don't think it truly is a lot of the time. Like generally what people I think are doing, I think I have an ideal physique in mind. And it looks like X. And so that physique in mind has, you know, overdeveloped or large who developed biceps or chest or whatever. That's fine. I want to specialize. That's fine. But that's the same as what I'm saying. Well, it's a little bit different in the sense of what you're saying. Then it's like the exercise variety is going to help in terms of changing leverages and get that it will still potentially do that for this individual. But what I would argue in that case is if you've got a physique goal, then potentially does not make sense just to in your normal day to day training ongoing, decide this is these are the muscles that are more important to me. These are the muscles that are less important to me, changing your normal routine into a specialization routine. But that's just, yeah, it just carries on until you get to where you're going. You're saying the same thing as me, you're just changing the word. Yeah, I guess so. I would say I kind of look at as high priority muscles and low priority muscles. It's just the fact that most people are going to have probably maybe three high priority muscles, potentially more. And then there'll be a couple of low priority. I'd say this normally going to be like one or two very low priority, where someone doesn't really care that train it directly. Well, because this is useful because you're extending the you're extending the applicability of what we're saying. Yeah, because then it's not just a six week or eight week phase. This is kind of how you build out of it. This is how you would build a program if you were trying to push your physique in a particular direction. Yeah, push it. So it's actually not just about specialization. It's about it's about structuring your program towards a specific goal. So I do sleep specialization phases. And the way obviously there's some scenarios, like you've mentioned, where they're going to be applicable. But I use them for general purposes. And I use them more as an opportunity to increase motor unit recruitment in a given muscle. And then I'll rotate that. So I'll have it as part of a essentially like a balanced program. So it might be okay. This is a program where I want overall development, fairly balanced development, male physique, focus, whatever. And then I might have a period where because like you've outlined before, we can't feasibly necessarily have uni-lateral work for everything.
muscle and classes, maybe single muscle, whatever. So I'll include some of those exercises, some of those more moda unit enhancement, recruitment sort of exercises methods for say one or two muscles at a time, and then I'll rotate that to something else. So the way I'm doing it generally is not, yes, there'll be some extra exercise variation to do that, but I'm looking at it more chasing a different adaption in that muscle, rather than necessarily speeding up the rate of growth or anything else. Does that make sense? Since anything else when you come up, I feel like we've gone down a lot of different paths today. So hopefully there's been something there for everyone, but I think you made a good point to conclude at the end there that while we value this in the language of specialization phase, this is ultimately the same framework you're going to use for any high priority muscle, which you could include in the training ongoing. So if nothing else, I think that's a valuable way for someone to think about this if they are writing programs. So thank you guys for joining us. As always, we appreciate all of you. Please like and share and comment and everything else, and we do hope you'll join us next week.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
The podcast discusses a leg specialization routine by Peary Raider, founder of Iron Man magazine, from his 1955 book.
The routine consists of six exercises
The hosts analyze the exercise selection, noting the inclusion of stiff-leg deadlifts for hamstrings and the potential rationale behind varying squat stances.
They debate the value of multi-joint exercises like squats for diffuse muscle stimulation versus isolated movements for targeted hypertrophy.
The conversation highlights the historical context of training with minimal equipment and contrasts it with modern exercise variety and scientific understanding.
Summary:
In this podcast episode, the hosts analyze a leg specialization routine by Peary Raider, a influential figure from the golden era of bodybuilding and founder of Iron Man magazine. Published in 1955, the routine was designed as an add-on to a full-body plan, performed three times weekly. It includes six exercises: flat foot barbell squats, stiff-leg deadlifts, and heel-elevated squats arranged in a specific alternating sequence, with sets typically around 10 repetitions.
The discussion focuses on the exercise selection, particularly the inclusion of stiff-leg deadlifts for hamstring development—somewhat uncommon in programs of that era—and the potential biomechanical differences between the squat variations. The hosts explore the historical context of training with limited equipment, comparing it to modern methods that utilize more machinery and specialized exercises. They also debate the broader physiological benefits of multi-joint exercises like squats, which provide diffuse muscular stimulus, versus isolated movements for targeted hypertrophy, emphasizing how training goals should guide exercise choice.
FAQs
Peary Raider was the founder and long-time owner of Iron Man magazine, a highly influential publication during the silver and golden eras of bodybuilding, known for promoting advanced and cutting-edge training techniques.
It is a six-exercise leg specialization routine designed to be done three times per week, replacing leg work in a full-body plan. The exercises include flat foot barbell squats, stiff leg deadlifts, and heel elevated squats in a specific alternating order.
Stiff leg deadlifts are included to target the hamstrings effectively, providing a hinge movement that complements squat variations, which primarily focus on the glutes and quadriceps, for a more holistic lower body workout.
The alternating order of exercises, such as repeating stiff leg deadlifts three times and squats twice, helps balance volume between quadriceps and hamstrings, potentially optimizing stimulus distribution across different muscle groups.
The heel elevated squat is believed to be more knee-dominant, targeting the quadriceps more intensely, while the flat foot squat may involve more hip extensors, offering a variation in muscle emphasis within the routine.
Multi-joint exercises like squats provide a diffuse stimulus that loads multiple muscle groups simultaneously, including smaller stabilizers, which can contribute to overall muscle mass and functional strength beyond isolated muscle targeting.
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