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Kill Your Fragility, Build More Muscle — Transcript

by Menno Henselmans · 3,199 words · 337 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00The pursuit of optimization has left many lifters fragile.
0:04If you can't be productive without your two hour morning routine
0:08- that's fragility.
0:09If you can't have a good workout without your 20 minute
0:12warm up and your pre-workout supplement - that's fragility, not optimality.
0:17In Nassim Taleb’s classification, any system or strategy that suffers from volatility
0:22or things not going according to plan is defined as a fragile.
0:26Stronger systems or strategies are robust:
0:29they are unhampered by volatility.
0:32The strongest systems, however, are antifragile:
0:35they get stronger from things not going according to plan.
0:38“Because that's all part of the plan.”
0:42Our bodies are the ultimate antifragile systems.
0:45When we exercise we deliberately put a stress on the body
0:49and it recovers and compensates from that stress,
0:52making us stronger in the process, instead of weaker.
0:55This video will help shed the fragility in your training and nutrition.
0:59As a result, you will save time, effort, and a lot of anxiety.
1:05The point of this video is to
1:06focus on the big picture fundamentals that really work, not the minutia.
1:10So I will generalize a little bit more in this video,
1:12and I will be a little bit less detailed than I normally am.
1:16I will refer to other sources where you can go into more detail
1:19if you want.
1:20The first part of your training, where many lifters
1:22can shed a lot of fragility is the warm-up. According to most PT certifications
1:26warming up is basically sacrosanct.
1:29It's something holy that you just have to do and you cannot question it.
1:32However, a new study found that warming up didn't actually benefit performance.
1:36The researchers had a group of trained lifters perform four sets of leg presses
1:40and four sets of bench presses to failure at 10 rep max loads,
1:443 different times
1:45after 3 different warm ups: one time with no warm up, the control group,
1:49one time after one set of 3 to 4 repetitions at 75% of 10 rep max,
1:54so that's just one low rep set,
1:56and then one more time with 2 sets of 3 to 4 repetitions
1:59at 55% and 75% of their 10 rep max.
2:03So basically one set, two sets or zero sets of warming up.
2:07Total repetitions performed were basically identical
2:09between the conditions,
2:11suggesting that the warmup didn't improve performance at all.
2:14If you're new to this line of research this may sound shocking,
2:16but there are actually numerous previous studies that also found
2:19that warming up has very little effect on performance.
2:23Most of the effects,
2:24if they occur at all, are for things like 1 rep max's on the squat,
2:28which are technical, or things that are technical and explosive,
2:31like the clean and jerk.
2:32Most of the positive effects of warming up are because of
2:35- you'd never guess - temperature.
2:37You don't have to have a complicated warmup
2:39with all of these different foam rolling, dynamic stretching routines,
2:42whatever...
2:43Anything that gets your core temperature up basically gets the job done
2:47for most intents and purposes.
2:49If you're a recreational lifter,
2:50something very brief
2:51that just gets your temperature up in any way is basically fine.
2:56Warming up should matter, if not just for performance,
2:58then maybe for injury prevention, although there's also no good
3:01research that warming up actually reduces injuries.
3:03But we do know, theoretically that warming up improves things like nerve
3:07conduction velocity,
3:08and it makes tissues more elastic, which helps reduce tears and strains.
3:13Overall, it's clear that you don't have to obsess over your warmup.
3:15You can warm up largely
3:16by feel and focus simply on getting your actual temperature up.
3:20Anything that achieves that is probably fine.
3:23You wouldn't sink into a 1 rep maximum squat with 400 pounds without any warmup,
3:27but you also don't need to do more than what makes you feel ready to perform
3:31that 1 rep max.
3:32Speaking of sacrosanct things that we feel like we have to do
3:35because they're good for us, even if we can't articulate why exactly:
3:39A new meta analysis of 15 studies found that post-workout
3:43static stretching or stretching in general had no effect
3:47on muscle soreness, strength development, or performance.
3:50These findings indicate that post-workout stretching doesn't improve recovery.
3:54Earlier research has also found that stretching,
3:56and adjust post-workout stretching, doesn't reduce injuries.
3:59The reason for that is that most of the effects of stretching are neural.
4:03When you stretch a muscle, you improve neural stretch tolerance,
4:06but you don't actually lengthen the muscle fascicles.
4:09You need very extreme protocols of stretching to increase muscle
4:12fascicle length.
4:13That is not something that a typical yoga session will achieve.
4:16Consequently, stretching mainly just makes you better at stretching.
4:20If you are stretching for a specific skill,
4:22like being able to get your hands under the bar
4:24for front squats with a clean grip, or if you want to get in a more tight
4:28grip on back squats and you need to do some stretching to get into position,
4:31or if you're a ballerina or a kickboxer and you need to do high kicks,
4:35stretching can have some positive effects on specifically these tasks,
4:40and then your stretching should be specifically tailored
4:42to getting better at that specific thing that you're stretching for.
4:46However, for most intents and purposes, for the average recreational lifter
4:50that just goes to the gym to look better and get stronger,
4:52stretching really doesn't achieve much at all.
4:55Personally, I did tons of stretching, dynamic
4:57stretching before the workouts, static stretching after the workouts,
5:00and at some point I started questioning whether it was all worth it.
5:03I stopped doing all of it from one day to the next and I noticed
5:06absolutely nothing.
5:08Resistance training is already inherently a form of dynamic weighted stretching,
5:12and research finds that resistance training makes you more flexible.
5:16It also actually increases muscle fascicle length.
5:19Moreover, any warmup sets that you do are inherently also a form of weighted
5:24dynamic stretching that help prepare you for the exact movement
5:27that you're going to do.
5:28So most lifters that don't do some other form of sports
5:31really don't need to do any stretching at all.
5:33Another part of the workout
5:34where many lifters suffer from high fragility is their exercise order.
5:38Many lifters feel that when they start training, they have their exercise order.
5:42It is “the plan” and they have to follow “the plan” exactly in that specific order.
5:48You really don't have to.
5:49The most recent meta analysis of the literature found
5:52that exercise order had no significant effect on muscle growth.
5:55For strength development it is generally the case that exercises
5:59that you perform earlier in the workout gain more strength.
6:02When you are less fatigued
6:03it seems easier to build strength because performance is higher. For muscle growth,
6:07however, while there are a lot of caveats in the available research,
6:11generally the conclusion seems to be that only your total work
6:14output matters. So your exercise order might matter
6:18if it affects your total work output, but it's not a major effect.
6:22There are many ways that you can program
6:24a workout exercise order in a more flexible manner
6:26without any detrimental effect on your gains.
6:29My favorite method that I use in my app as well is probably combo sets.
6:34I explained combo sets in more detail in this video, but briefly, a combo set
6:38is a series of exercises that don't target any related musculature,
6:43so you could be thinking of an overhead press, a squat, and a chin up
6:47that you can all do in the squat rack,
6:48and you do those essentially as a circuit with rest in between.
6:53So it's not a superset where you don't rest at all,
6:55you do catch your breath and you have some rest
6:57in between the sets, but you do a set of squats, a set of chin ups
7:00and a set of overhead presses, and then you go back to the squats.
7:03But you do rest and catch your breath in between all of them.
7:06The end result is that your rest interval between sets of squats often ends up
7:10very large, which is great for muscle growth.
7:12So the quads, after being trained,
7:14have a lot of rest before they are trained again.
7:17This means that your total work output is actually often very high,
7:21and we've seen in research that longer rest intervals
7:23when they increase total workout, they make you do more reps,
7:26they also lead to more muscle growth and more strength development
7:29in multiple studies.
7:31When you use combo sets in this manner, the quads, they get a lot of rest,
7:34but your total rest periods are actually relatively short.
7:37You basically just have to catch your breath.
7:40As a result,
7:40by the time you get back to squats, you have rested
7:43maybe a little bit longer than you would have
7:45if you had not done any exercise in the rest interval of squats.
7:48However, in that period, you've now done your chin ups and your overhead presses
7:52as well, basically cutting your workout length roughly in half or even a third.
7:57And research indeed confirms that you can save an enormous amount of time
8:00when you program this way without any negative effects on your gains,
8:03and like I said, if your rest intervals go up because of this,
8:07it might actually improve your gains.
8:09So use combo sets and don't be a slave to your exercise order.
8:12In fact, you can largely think of a combo set
8:15as a series of exercises where the order doesn't matter.
8:18Fragility can also show up in our diet, especially when it comes to carbohydrates.
8:22Carbs have a well documented placebo effect.
8:25When you tell people that they consumed carbs,
8:27even when they haven't because they were consuming a shake or a gel
8:30in some study, they perform better.
8:33A new study even found that when you tell people that carbs
8:36improve performance, they have a bigger placebo effect.
8:39Placebo effect might seem nice, but every placebo effect has a dark twin.
8:43The nocebo effect.
8:44When you believe you need carbs for performance
8:47you also become reliant on them.
8:49This creates a nocebo effect,
8:51when you no longer have your carbs, you become reliant on your pre-workout
8:55carbs to have a good workout,
8:57even if there physiologically wasn't anything going on to begin with.
9:00And that might very well be the case.
9:02In contrast to mainstream wisdom, I recently compiled a research overview
9:06where I showed that
9:07most research finds that carbs do not, in fact, improve performance,
9:11and over the long run the vast majority of studies
9:14have not resulted in actually improved
9:17strength gains or increased muscle hypertrophy.
9:20Most of the effects in any studies where people do think higher carb diets
9:24improve performance or muscle hypertrophy, it's the case
9:27that they actually had a higher total energy intake.
9:29In studies where energy intake and protein intake were equated between the groups,
9:33we see no effect of carbohydrate intake on muscle growth or strength development.
9:38For most lifters that don't do some other sports, like kickboxing
9:41or soccer, where the requirement for carbs is a lot higher,
9:44the amount of carbs and fats in your diet is really not that important.
9:49The big picture things to get right
9:50are your total energy intake and your protein intake.
9:52When you have those covered, the carb to fat ratio of your diet is fine
9:56tuning and best.
9:57The area where we see perhaps the most fragility is injury
10:01prevention and recovery in general.
10:03When people think about recovery,
10:05they think they need to go into an ice bath,
10:07they need a hot tub, they need a massage, they need to do foam rolling...
10:11In reality,
10:11none of those things have compelling evidence behind them to improve recovery.
10:15But you know what does really reduce injuries?
10:18Strength training!
10:19A new systematic review of 40 studies looked at
10:21what reduces sports injury risk the most.
10:24Strength training won by far.
10:27All of the most successful training techniques had strengthening in common.
10:31This included Nordic ham curls, high intensity neuromuscular training
10:35and what they called “warm-ups” that actually involved
10:37a high degree of strength training.
10:39Most other recovery techniques are based on whazy woozy ferry dust.
10:49In contrast, resistance training has multiple established
10:52mechanisms of action on how it reduces injury risk.
10:56First and foremost: It literally makes all the tissues stronger.
10:59Resistance training increases your bone density,
11:01it increases tendon size,
11:03all the tissues become stronger and thereby harder to damage.
11:06Second: active recovery enhances blood flow.
11:09Most other techniques, like massage mainly seem to work to the degree
11:12that they work at all, because they simply improve blood flow.
11:15Going for a walk has the same effect.
11:17Third: neuromuscular improvements increase proprioception and joint stability,
11:21basically, making the muscles take more of the force of movements that you're doing
11:25and the connective tissues like your tendons and your joints less.
11:28Fourth, and probably most underrated and actually most important based
11:32on modern pain sciences and physiotherapy, exercise reduces kinesiophobia,
11:37fear of exercise.
11:38The bottom line is that most recreational lifters
11:40really don't need to bother with anything for their recovery,
11:44other than just having a good diet and getting enough sleep.
11:47Beyond that, just go live your life.
11:49The reduction in stress, in the increased well-being
11:51that you get from having a happy life, arguably, is far more
11:55than all of these other techniques that I mentioned.
11:57Another major source of fragility is pre-workout supplementation.
12:01There's really only one active ingredient in most pre-workout supplements
12:04other than creatine,
12:05which is not really necessary to supplement pre-workout
12:08and could be supplemented at any other time,
12:10and that's caffeine.
12:12Ironically, caffeine has mostly mental effects, as I explained in this video.
12:16In fact, in research, we see that people have more effects from caffeine
12:20when they believe they are on it, but they're not actually on it,
12:23then when they're actually on it and they don't know that they're on it.
12:27Expectation of being on caffeine and the belief that you are consuming
12:31an energy
12:32drink is more important than the actual physiological effect of the caffeine.
12:37So it's mostly a mental effect. Likely because the effect is mostly mental,
12:41caffeine is one of the few drugs in the world where we see no dose
12:45response effect.
12:46That means that if you consume more caffeine
12:48you might feel more energized, but the actual effect on performance
12:52does not increase in the vast majority of research.
12:55Ironically, there is a dose response of the placebo effect,
12:59so when people believe they are on a higher dose
13:02of caffeine the placebo effect actually increases.
13:05But when you just give them more actual caffeine,
13:09the actual performance benefit does not increase.
13:12Nevertheless, you might make the argument that caffeine does improve performance.
13:16Indeed, numerous meta analyses have shown that caffeine
13:19supplementation before a workout does increase performance in the workout.
13:23The effect is generally very small and not very reliable, but it's there.
13:27However, research is also quite clear that caffeine
13:30supplementation over the long run does not improve muscle growth,
13:34strength, development, or fat loss, according to multiple studies.
13:38Part of that is likely because the effect is mental, and part of
13:41that is likely because there is tolerance and habituation to the effect of caffeine
13:45over the long run.
13:46Regardless of how you interpret the findings,
13:47the bottom line is that you don't actually need
13:49pre-workouts to have good workouts or to make good gains.
13:52If you like consuming a pre-workout, by all means have your coffee,
13:56have your energy drink.
13:57If it makes you feel good,
13:58if it makes you motivated, go for it, but don't become reliant on it.
14:03The seventh source of fragility I hope to kill with
14:05this video is the obsession with perfect posture.
14:08Tons of social media content from physiotherapist follows a playbook
14:12that is well known in marketing.
14:14You convince people they have a problem they didn't know they had
14:17and then you sell them the solution.
14:19Research surveys have found that basically nobody believes they have perfect posture.
14:23But if they don't have any symptoms, they don't have any pain or dysfunction,
14:26what exactly is wrong with their posture?
14:29Nuttin. That’s what.
14:30Most research finds no significant relationships
14:33between people's posture and pain or dysfunction, even for low back
14:37pain, where we see so many claims that it's caused by sitting in the wrong way,
14:41or having the wrong posture or lifting in the wrong way.
14:44A systematic review of systematic reviews, basically the ultimate umbrella review
14:48found no significant relationships between posture,
14:51active or passive, and back pain.
14:55Instead, modern physiotherapy research teaches us two major lessons.
14:59First and foremost: There is no perfect posture.
15:01There is no optimal posture for everyone.
15:04There is a very wide range of postures and structures for the body that can be
15:08perfectly sustainable and valid for functioning and pain reduction.
15:13If you have no pain or clear dysfunction, there is probably nothing wrong with you.
15:17Even if you have some degree of forward
15:19head posture or anterior pelvic tilt, or a limp length asymmetry.
15:23Absent pain or dysfunction, all of these things are completely normal.
15:27Just as normal as not looking like a ten out of ten fitness influencer.
15:31Second, neither active nor passive posture is consistently associated
15:35with muscle lengths, tightness, strength, or pain or dysfunction.
15:40So when it comes to your posture
15:41don't go looking for problems and things to fix that aren't broken.
15:45The final source of OCD fragility I hope to rid you off
15:48is your training split.
15:50Many lifters feel that their training split is something very important,
15:53and they start their program by thinking of what splits to use.
15:57Generally, they have very few splits in their mental vocabulary of splits,
16:01if you will, and they either select full body,
16:04upper-lower or push-pull-legs. That is completely backward.
16:07What you should do is optimize your training volume and your training
16:10frequency per exercise and per muscle group for all muscle groups.
16:14Then you put all of that together, and then you get whatever comes out of that.
16:18Your split doesn't need to have a name, and split itself is completely irrelevant
16:22for muscle growth.
16:23Muscle growth responds primarily to sets
16:27per week, per muscle for that specific muscle group.
16:30So an ideal program actually has essentially a sub program
16:34for every muscle group,
16:35and then you have to
16:36join them all together to find something that fits for all of the muscle groups
16:40at the same time.
16:41That's a problem of combinatorial optimization.
16:43And you know what's really good at that?
16:45My app.
16:45So if you want an optimized training program, you can get a two week free trial
16:49for my app with the link in the description.
16:51Or if you want to learn how to make your own programs,
16:54you can also learn that in my online PT course.
16:57I hope this video helped make you more antifragile.

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