Dr. Schoenfeld: If your goal is just to build some muscle, gain some strength, a very minimalist routine, I mean, training an hour a week, let's say, two days, two half-hour sessions a week can give most people very nice results, provided you're training hard. If you're looking to be a bodybuilder, are you going to step on stage? No, I would say with 100% confidence that is not going to be sufficient to optimize your gains. So, volume has been shown to be a driver of hypertrophy. Again, we've done original research on this, we've made an app, made analytic work, and there is a dose-response relationship up to a certain point. It is individual-specific as well. So, some people respond better or respond well to lower volumes. Some people need more volume to maximize their results. It's hard to study individual responses but these are kind of general insights that we glean from the literature.

But I would say, as a general guideline, to optimize hypertrophy, you want to be somewhere between 10 to 20 sets per muscle per week. Now, that's not going to be able to be done doing two half-hour sessions per week but we recently published a review paper called "No Time to Lift?" it's open-access, you can maybe post on this podcast the link to that or show the image of the study. But we basically kind of looked at what is your minimal effective dose? And that was roughly around four sets per muscle per week, which, again, can be done two, maximum, you know, three half-hour sessions, two to three half-hour sessions per week. You can get very nice results and, I think, get probably, for most people, the majority of gains in that period of time. And then, if you want more, you're going to have to devote more time.

Dr. Patrick: Are there certain strategies that can be...so, we were talking about, like, powerlifting. Are there certain things that can be done to, you know, be able to not have to have as much time as well? I mean, certain types of exercises...

Dr. Schoenfeld: Yeah. So, a couple things. Number one...or several. First of all, training with lighter loads, while, again, it's a very viable option, it does extend the time of the workout. So, if you're training, let's say, with 30 reps, the set's going to take triple the amount of time if you're training with 10 reps. So, that, if you're very time-pressed, can be a consideration.

Now, how much that, depending upon how many sets you're doing, if you're doing minimalistic training, it's probably not adding that much time on. If you're doing a lot of volume, it can be more extensive. But using multi-joint exercises...so, again, multi-joint is more than one joint. Presses, rows, squats, deadlifts, push-ups, chin-ups, these are exercises that involve multiple muscle groups, a lot of stabilizer muscles. They're much more time-efficient than doing, let's say, a bicep curl. So, when you're doing, let's say, a lat pulldown or chin up, you're working your biceps very effectively, you're performing elbow flexion in addition to working your lats, the external portion of your pecs even are working, and many of the stabilizer muscle groups. Squats involve many muscle groups, so, really the total lower body, and even stabilizers in your torso. So, I would say focus more on your multi-joint exercise.

And then you can use various time-efficient strategies, so, kind of these advanced training methods, such as a superset, which is doing two different exercises. And there's different ways to structure these to something called a paired set where you do agonist/antagonist movements such as...so, the biceps and triceps are agonist/antagonist muscles, meaning that, when one is contracting, one is shortening, the other is lengthening per se.

See, if you do a biceps curl, you can immediately do a triceps press down after that and really you're working the muscles in different fashion. You don't have to rest between the sets. You could do a leg exercise, so, lower-body followed by an upper-body exercise. Again, you're working different muscle groups so it's more time-efficient, you don't have to take the rest. If you're going to do, let's say, sets of chest press...so, let's say I do the typical traditional way of doing sets is you do a set then you rest and you do another set for the same muscle group, you rest, that's going to take more time because you're going to have to rest between those sets.

There is something called drop sets where you can do a set to failure, or certainly close to failure, then you drop the weight...well, not drop literally but you reduce the amount of load. So, for instance, let's say you have a rack of dumbbells and you use 20-pound dumbbells for curls. You can then, when you finish, you're getting really difficult on those last reps, you then go to the 15-pound dumbbells and you do more reps because you're lightening the load, you're able to do more weights. You can do triple drops. So, you go from 20 to 15 to 10 to 5 even and just do them without any rest and then not do any more sets. So, rather than doing multiple sets, you just do this one drop set, long drop set.

Now, is that as effective as doing multiple sets of the same muscle? We don't have enough evidence to show but I do think we have enough where I would confidently say, for the gen pop, it will be just...or close to as effective. I don't think for the majority of the populations that will make much difference. Again, for the high-level athlete/bodybuilder, it might, and that's where, again, context is important.

Dr. Patrick: This idea of resting, this is great information because, typically, the way I work out, which is far from bodybuilder level, I don't rest in between sets but I immediately switch to the next thing. And then I'll eventually go back to that first muscle group I was working. So, like, I'll have, you know, like three different muscle groups and I'm doing them lighter and faster. And then, so, if you are doing a set, like, why is it important to rest in between the set? Is it, like, something to do with, like, muscle protein synthesis or what?

Dr. Schoenfeld: Well, I mean, let's say you're going to do four sets of chest presses. You have to rest because, if you're training really hard at that last rep, you pick up the weight, let's say, in 2 seconds, by default, if you're training very hard, you're not going to be able to do any more reps or else then you're at failure. So, you have to have some degree of rest. Now, if you're resting very short periods, let's say you're resting 30 seconds, the amount of load that you're going to be able to do will be much less or the amount of reps at the same load.

And this is actually interesting. So, it had always been promoted, this is another area where I've shifted my thought processes, but it had been promoted that resting shorter was better for muscle hypertrophy. So, what I've been taught, when I was an up-and-coming strength and conditioning professional, that, if you want strength, you take long rest, like 3 minutes in between your sets, and for hypertrophy it's like 30 seconds to a minute because that will maximize the hormonal response. So, in between sets, or depending on the type of training that you are doing, shorter inter-set rest intervals will promote greater growth hormone, testosterone, and IGF-1 responses after the workout is over.

And that used to be thought to be a main driver of hypertrophy, the compelling body of literature now shows that, if it does have an effect, it would be very modest and it might not even have any effect at all. So, certainly it would not be something that I consider would be important to take into account. And the issue is is that volume load, the total amount of weight that you lift in a given session, which is the amount of work that you're doing, does seem to be a factor.

So, let's say I'm doing a set of squats with 200 pounds for 10 reps. And then I rest 30 seconds between...I'll try to do another one after 30 seconds. Let's say I try to use that same 200 pounds, I'm not getting anywhere near 10 reps. And based on the literature that we have, I'm probably only getting five reps. Whereas, if I would rest 2 minutes, I'd be able to get much closer to that 10 reps. And if I rested three, even more. And that's why it's actually been shown that having short rest periods between sets, if you're doing a certain number of sets and you're taking short rests, it actually compromises hypertrophy. So, it actually has a negative effect, giving greater credence to the fact that, at the very least, the volume load is more important than any hormonal effects that are given.