Welcome to the Plant-Free MD podcast with Dr. Anthony Chaffy, where we discuss diet and nutrition and how this affects health and chronic disease and show you how you can use this to optimize your health and happiness both mentally and physically. All right, thank you everybody for joining me for another episode of the Planting MD podcast. I’m your host Dr. Anthony Chaffy and today I have a special return guest, Dr. Nash Yosich who is coming back to tell us about um optimal uh training techniques for uh peak fitness and physique. Dr. Yos, thank you so much for coming back. You’re welcome and thank you very much for having me with you and giving me an opportunity to talk to your audience. It uh it is my great pleasure. Absolutely. Um, so for for people that have seen the last um video, they know who you are, but for people that that are just seeing you for the first time, can you give us a a bit of an idea of who you are and what you do? So um I uh regarding my uh qualifications, I uh have studied philosophy. I have a PhD in philosophy but at the same time I I did a lot of research on my own on my own accord and studies and uh in the fields of anatomy, physiology, biomechanics, nutrition and uh that has helped me to actually achieve all these results in sport as I did. I competed 46 times. I won 17 titles in bodybuilding and uh I’ve been in bodybuilding for over 40 years and uh during that period I I coached personally over 3,000 clients and help them to get in fantastic shape and uh on top of that I published 10 books covering all these subjects of nutrition training hypertrophy muscle growth lifestyle changeing for beginners and similar topics. So u yes I also have a YouTube channel Dr. Nashich and uh I talk primarily about optimization of muscle growth and fat loss. So this is my primary interest in my YouTube channel and I think this is the reason why we are here today. There you go. So absolutely and um so last time we focused a lot on the nutrition side of things for people that don’t know uh Dr. Yosuch has been predominantly animalbased. You’ve been pretty much carnivore diet for the last uh 20 years plus and has trained with some of the the the legends in bodybuilding like Serge Nubre and those who have um quite a quite animal-based diet. uh even leading up to the competitions uh was pretty much pure carnivore diet of just meat six pounds of horse meat a day in Serge’s case and uh had fantastic results. So if people want to watch that video and look learn about the uh the nutrition side of things, please do just check that out. I’ll put the the link in the description as well. Um today we’re talking about the different training styles. There’s so many different uh training styles uh and people ask me this all the time because there are so many athletes that are coming to this or or or people that want to become athletes and they want to know what what are the optimal training uh programs and regimens especially for someone on a carnivore diet where you have really big recovery you do have a great physiological return on your work. Um there’s so many different uh theories on a lot of u a lot of rest between sets, you know, really high intensity, shorter rest, high volume, more more reps, more sets. uh or the the complete opposite the um the the popular sort of Mike Menser sort of idea of you just work out you know once every January and then you know you do and then then let your body rest completely and then come back to it again uh sometime later in the future. Uh what is your opinion on some of the best technique sort of the broad strokes techniques on uh approaches to working out for optimal muscle growth hypertrophy? Uh all right it’s a great question very much debated and controversial. Again when I talk about anything in uh regarding bodybuilding I’m talking about optimal muscle growth and fat loss. So I want people to really do their best and achieve their best because I see life as an opportunity to be out there and do whatever you do the best that you can do. Apart from that I don’t really understand uh if there is anything else. Mhm. Uh having said that when I talk about the most effective training system, I have in mind not just my own experience. I have in mind experience of uh thousands of my clients and also experience of countless number of professional bodybuilders from uh 70s till now. So uh as you know I I have a very good opinion about many things that have happened in 70s especially diet. Uh when it comes to training uh I like their volume but not necessarily everything was perfect in 70s. People trained muscles two three times per week. But when I say people I’m not talking about everybody. I’m talking about top bodybuilders. and talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger, Serge Nubra. I’m talking about uh Sergio Oliva, people like that. They train muscle twice per twice per week. Every muscle sometimes three three times per week, but that three times per week was usually a few weeks before the show. Twice per week was some part of the offseason, but most of the offseason would still be once per week. Um don’t forget that all of them were on steroids. So steroids are there to help you recover faster. Therefore you can you can start training again more often. So training twice per week which I have done as well is not a problem but it it’s not sustainable. It cannot last forever. It cannot be year round. This is my experience. I will explain why. So this is this is the issue the problem that we are facing when people start comparing my advice which is that best training system for you to optimize your muscle growth is to train muscle every muscle once per week. Okay, as I said it comes from my own experience and it comes from experience of thousands of my clients. Hundreds of them are competitive bodybuilders and the best results they all had when they train muscle once per week year round. Now when it comes before the show I used to train twice per week but that would never be more than six to eight weeks before the show. After that, I would feel drained, shattered, exhausted, and it would take me maybe two weeks to really start feeling normal again when it comes to training, recovery, sleeping, etc. Now, the question is why is that? Would I do that again? No, I wouldn’t. The reason why I did it is that I didn’t know better. So, my last show was in 1995. uh my 46th show which I won in in Leicester. So uh the problem with training twice per day there are few but the main issue comes from uh the stigma that muscle recovers within 48 to 72 hours. Therefore you can train muscle again. That may be true not necessarily but maybe true. But also what is true is that connective tissues like tendons and ligaments they recover longer to recover. They need up to 5 days to recover. So uh this a facts. So when you’re performing biceps curls you’re not only training biceps muscle biceps brachi you’re also training all connective tissues involved in that uh movement the whole unit of tissues. Now if you train that muscle in three days time yes muscle may have recovered but tendons didn’t and this is for example what happened to you what you mentioned in the previous video when you’ve had a shoulder or chest problem your connective tissue didn’t recover. So if you don’t recover your connective tissue you should not be entering the same experience again and repeating the same training for the same muscle again. You need full recovery. Now when you exercise the muscle you break down tissue. So you have a catabol you enter the catabolic state with last up to three days. Then that muscle recovers but also you need to wait for connective tissue to recover another two days. Now when it comes to super composition or remodeling which is building new muscle, building extra tissue in order to survive next training, next stress easier, it will take another two days. So even if you train the muscle every 5 days, you will never enter that period of super compensation. You need to allow that muscle to grow as well as to recover. The best example for that super compensation are our blisters. We have blisters because the body super compensate builds more tissue there in order to survive gripping and resistance and fracture damage of this tissue skin. So it builds more tissue. The same it does to the muscle. But now you need at least seven days sometimes even more. I’m not religious. So number seven doesn’t mean anything to me. Lucky number. No. But from the practice from the experience we know that within 7 days you have full muscle recovery full connective tissue recovery of the particular muscle group and also full super compensation. These are physiological reasons for benefits of single workout per week. Now there are a lot of uh so-called experts who are coming and say oh the studies have shown if you train muscle twice per week is much better but you don’t need to do you you’re asking for too many sets uh you’re saying 20 25 but if you do 10 each session I mean another nonsense right this is the same as saying to you right why why would you have six eggs for breakfast why don’t you have three and then have three in in half an hour it doesn’t work like that you need a full meal you need a full training session. You can’t cut the session in in pieces is arbitrary amount of sets in order to hit that muscle again and again. First of all, because if you do that right, you can’t recover the muscle. You can’t recover the tissues. You’re not going to overcompensate. You don’t do it. This is one reason. Another one, if you cut your number of sets to half, that training session is not going to be effective. So, we’re not talking about optimized muscle growth. We are talking about having some nice time in the gym, maybe. socializing, doing few photos for Instagram. Fantastic. You can train muscle every day. If you don’t train it with full intensity, you can train it every day, not twice per week. Why not three times per week? You can train every muscle every day. People are doing that. People are coming and say, I’m training full body four, five times a week. Amazing. It’s better than nothing. But that show me your pictures. Oh. Oh. Many many experts, so-called experts which are uh dominating YouTube unfortunately have never shown their pictures. You never seen their shape. Most of them are out of shape. Some of them are so skinny they cover their bodies especially legs all the time. And they are the ones who are actually teaching people about how to trend legs. So show us your legs. I I show my legs all the time so I can talk about it. But no, they they do this with training in uh in truck bottoms all the time. So basically, you can’t just uh fulfill some uh fantastic uh concepts of new training system just in order to to invent them. If you do muscle correctly, if you train exact number of sets that I’m recommending, a number of reps and volume, there is no way that you’re going to train that muscle again within seven days. So, so many people that I’ve coached tried that and they’re coming to the same conclusion and they’re growing, right? They’re changing. You can see them on my website. Uh, we change, I change people. So the I am just telling you for your best outcome the training muscle once per week fully meaning with high intensity high volume and enough reps is is uh fundamental for your muscle growth. Now we can talk about intensity, we can talk about time under tension, we can talk about mechanical tension. uh these are different subjects but they’re also necessary to understand in order to complete highintensity workout without which you will never grow any muscle and if you don’t train with high intensity again I will repeat you can train every muscle two three times per week maybe even every day so uh but not much is going to happen yeah well that that was sort of was wondering as well I I I remember hearing that when um uh you know in the 90s when I was uh growing up and hearing about this and saying that that was sort of the thing just really go after a muscle group once a week and there and people were getting much better results with that. Um but I think but that was that was the question I had was that but that’s assuming that you’re really going after it and really intensely hitting that muscle group. Is is that correct? Absolutely. you know that I I don’t really uh agree with everything that happened in ‘ 90s as I mentioned in the previous video especially diet and bubble guts and you know the big sections and mass monsters and all that. So uh but I the best thing that have they have changed uh in 90s was training system and I believe that they improved a lot dramatically just because of that just because of training muscle once per week. U everybody did it or at least 99% of people did it. I I I remember Kevin Leon didn’t do it. He was training muscle twice per week. Ronnie Coleman was training muscle twice per week. And you help me if you remember but I can’t remember anybody else. But there is a overwhelming majority of other people who were training every muscle just once per week with fantastic phenomenal results. ‘ 90s have invented that. They they came to that understanding that you have to really go for that muscle, take the maximum out of it and then leave that muscle to recover, leave connective tissues to recover, allow for super compensation and then hit the muscle again. The best way to understand that you’re doing right is when you’re approaching your next, for example, chess session. So you’ve done chest on Monday comes next Monday and on Sunday you cannot wait to go to the gym and you are full of enthusiasm and optimism and motivation and focus and you’re you’re literally getting pumped just driving to the gym. That means you’re doing things right now. If you go to the gym to do chest again 3 days later after you’ve done it and you feel a bit tired and you’re thinking about whatever else and your chest is still a bit sore uh but you have to do it you know hard work will pay no hard work right work intelligent work so that this is not good you’re not in a good good world you you shouldn’t be doing anything because your chest didn’t recover your nervous system didn’t recover that particular area so you basically need to readjust Trust yourself. You need to be happy to enter the gym. When I go to train anything today, I’m going to be doing legs. I already feel them like, you know, crying for it. But they had one week and when I hit them, they are going to be begging me for rest for all seven days. Mhm. There is no way I can do legs today on Tuesday and then again on Friday. Forget about it. I mean, that will be I would feel it immediately in my tendons and my connective tissues, in my joints, everywhere. So you don’t do it. But if I do only three proxy sets of squats and two sets of leg press, then I can do them every other day as I mentioned. But I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about optimal development of muscle muscle growth. I’m talking about a 100% development. So if you are uh interested in that then this advice is for you. And this applies to majority of people. I know there will always be people there who say, “Oh, I’m doing much better when I do every five days.” Fine, great. enjoy your training and I hope you grow. Uh but these people are exceptions. Serge Nubra was an exception. Arnold was an exception. We may argue now and I may agree with that that both of them Arnold and Nubre would be bigger if they train muscle less often. If they try if they did muscle once a week, both of them would be bigger. Opra was only 90 kgs. Don’t forget about that 90 to 95 on the stage. And that’s how much I competed with two. He was 102 in the offseason. So he managed to achieve a phenomenal shape and the phenomenal conditioning and that made him so impressive on the stage, but he wasn’t that big. Arnold was only Arnold was 105 and he’s 185. So that’s not much weight. And I think one of the reasons regardless of steroids, regardless of all these exogenous compounds, one of the reasons was that they did not allow that super compensation to go all out 100%. Now in ‘ 90s people started doing that and uh most of them ended up training muscle once per week allowing full recovery and super composition. Okay. Interesting. And then so like someone like Ronnie Coleman be an exception to that or was he do you think he probably would have been better off doing it once a week as well? Ronnie Coleman was one of a kind is extreme machine specimen. Yes. And um I don’t know why he was using such a heavy weights. He didn’t have to because he had such a superior genetics and uh he trained muscles more often than once per week. But this was Ronnie Coleman. Again, as I mentioned, we are not just uh physical entities. We are also intellectual and spiritual entities. So, uh this was the way that made him happy. One has to be happy to to to do things right. This was his way. But how many people did it like him? Nobody. Nobody else. If you just research and you find out, you will see that all professional bodybuilders when we say that word professional bodybuilders, we forget often that these are actually people who make their living out of bodybuilding. So they would not do mistakes. They will do everything right. And if 99% of them do something and have something in common, then we can start talking about the principle. And they’re all training every muscle once per week. Yeah. So, you know, when Lee Henny says sarcastically in an interview, oh, now they have shoulders day, triceps day, this day. Oh, we were doing that together. Yes, but that wasn’t necessarily the best for most of us. Maybe it was good for you. Maybe Dorian’s training system was good for him, but not for most of the people. But I’m talking about most of the people. So, whoever is listening to this, bear this in mind. and talking to most of the people exceptions will always be there but as the name suggests they’re not the rule so most of us are within the rule I am not Ronny Coleman I am not Sra I talk about his him doing 40 sets bench press I was watching was doing in front of me I never did 40 sets of bench press in my life I never did 40 sets for any muscle group the most I’ve done was 30 sets but that’s me I saw it I took it as an as an option and I adapted to that option and it worked for me. But I never said to anybody, oh, you should train like Sung. I even have the video, should you train like Sugar? Because so many people asked me, oh, you’re saying 40 sets, there is no way I can do it for I never said you should do it. I’m just saying listen to what the men did and use it as a as guidance to increase your number of sets. You’re never going to get to 40 sets. I never did. Never have to. But don’t take exception for a rule. That’s the that’s that’s the thing. So there will always be people like Ronnie Coleman. But uh if you look uh uh across the board, most of the professional bodybuilders uh training and having fantastic results training muscle once per week and uh this applies to most of us regardless of you being natural or enhanced. This is another issue that people ask always. Oh, but that only works if you are if you’re taking steroids. So, if you’re not taking steroids, then you think you can train muscle twice per week. So, one single reasonable explanation for that one. So, you’re going to recover faster than somebody who is taking steroids. No, you’re not. You’re going to recover slower. Yeah. Always that buts and ifs, but I’m not talking butts and ifs. I’m just putting principles down. principles uh as good old English say has it methods are many principles are few methods always change and principles never do so I talking principles and I hope people understood what I said now so you can change the methods but you stick to the principles yeah absolutely um you mentioned the We talked in the last um you know previously we talked about how um I I had uh when I first went carnivore I I found that I my recovery was just insane. I could do so much more so much more volume. I I wasn’t getting sore. I I I was doing 30 plus sets of squats and wasn’t sore the next day. Went played rugby, you know, that night and started going back into it and and still wasn’t sore. So, okay, well, I’m going to try this. And I started doing that that volume and because I I could do well over 30 sets, I sort of said, “Okay, I’m going to cap it at 20 sets in each particular sort of compound lift. The smaller lifts I didn’t I didn’t um bother doing all that much. Um but you know, like I would do 20 sets of bench, I do 20 sets of dips. I might even do 20 sets of flies. But if I was doing it at home, I didn’t really have anything that could do that properly. And then on all, you know, I’d have the next day I’d do something else and then come back to it. So I had sort of a split. I had a two-day split. I did full body on those two days. And then the second day I would do again I would do an incline bench for 20 sets and then I do 20 sets of dips and go on from there. So or you know 20 sets of squats, 20 sets of of deadlift. I often did like the hexar deadlift. I quite like that from athletic point of view. It’s very good for uh sprinters. And um and so I do that and I felt that that I was doing really well with that. But I I ran into that that issue that you were talking about with the the tendons. I it took a while, you know. I mean, it took a few months, but and I was actually feeling good and I and I was like like you were saying there. I looked forward to every workout. I was, “Yes, get me in here.” Um but then all of a sudden it just um it caught up with me and I I sat down. I tried to do the bench and it just this pain shot through my my right pec and okay, what was that? And I just had developed, you know, tendonitis. I had strained the tendons and that took a couple weeks to to get through. It healed pretty quickly. I was able to work through it then get back. But then I sort of realized like, okay, there there is a limit to this. This is this is stupid. I do need to to cut it down a bit. And um went back to twice a week for each muscle group. Uh and that was that was certainly better. So I definitely ran face first into that one. Yeah, you you were doing definitely too much. You were burning the candle from both sides. I don’t know for what reason. Maybe you had reasons for that but wanted to try it really. Yeah. Yeah. You can you can experiment but if you want to uh if you want to really again talk about optimal muscle muscle hypertrophy then this is not the case. Now you you need to leave that muscle to rest to grow and you know even even the look at the the horses right they’re not chasing them every day on the on the truck. You need to allow them to recover and then to go again. Lions don’t hunt every hour, twice every day or something like that. They do like every four or five days. And look at them. Every every natural being needs time to recover. This is why we sleep on the end of the day. So that that that change of uh of our hard impact exercise and rest is very very important. Uh most of the people try to do that to train more often in order to stay in shape thinking oh if I don’t train like this I’m going to get fat. Well, you’re not going to get fat if you don’t eat carbohydrates and if you are, you know, on high protein, medium fat diet, you will never get fat. You’re always going to be lean. Now, if you want to grow, you need to be intelligent enough to do just enough and then let it rest and let it grow because super compensation doesn’t happen physiologically before recovery is finished. This how it is. So we can we can say whatever we want to say and uh regardless of enhanced or natural bodybuilders the principle is the same. My son is natural. He’s training four times per week and uh he looks fantastic. He’s very lean. Um I u I will send you some photos of him as well so you can see. People always saying, “Oh, but this is not for natural bodybuilders.” I’m actually preparing the the videos with him on natural bodybuilding. But the principles they don’t change. You know, if you’re natural and if you’re training uh right, and I will explain what I think is right, you you may need even more time to recover than enhanced bodybuilder. Why why are enhanced bodybuilders resting seven days for every muscle group? Are they stupid? I don’t know. They look how look how they look and they still need seven days. So your natural now and you want to train muscle twice per week because you want to make that muscle grow within couple of months. If your natural is going to go much slower is much better, much healthier. You should be proud of your results. Uh you should be really feeling great about every single pound of muscle that you have achieved naturally. But you need to understand it will take longer. It will require more patience and also more knowledge. And as when it comes to recovery training muscle with high level of intensity, we will require at least one week for that muscle to recover. And you can try and you can train twice per week, but you will never change. Send me your pictures now and in in a year or two, and I guarantee you’re going to be the same. People People are staying the same. Mhm. There are a lot of natural guys out there who look fantastic, but they you have to understand that you have to be very very disciplined with diet because uh steroids do increase uh BMR, basal metabolic rate. So you may get away with, you know, a few biscuits here and there or beer or something. But if you’re natural, you have to be more disciplined and more disciplined and more patient. Your results will be slower but they will be permanent and uh you can continue for the rest of your life to enjoy bodybuilding and stay in fantastic shape. You don’t have to take any steroids. Yeah. Very good. Um so then that sort of comes down to okay so working out one muscle group uh per week or each muscle group per week. um what is the best way to tax that muscle group um to the fullest extent? Is it the the Mike Menser just you know one big set to failure or is it the Serge Nubre you know 12 sets of 12 with very little rest or 40 sets um and things like that or something else entirely. Well, good you mentioned Mike Menser because uh Mike Menser was in the best shape when he won Mr. universe in Akapulka. I believe it was 1978 and he was the only bodybuilder in history who won with a perfect score of 100. Nice. So, respect to Mike Manser and his shape and his look in 1978. And uh 19 uh 78 Mike Maner train trained the same like everybody else performing 25 sets or more per major muscle group. There were eyewitnesses who spoke about Mike Menel and his training like uh Tom Flats, Buer Co, Casey Vayat, Johnny Little his biographer and friend and they said all that Mike trend like everybody else. He would be in the gym for hours. This is when Mike Mensah was at his best in 1978. Now he started contemplating about reducing number of sets. He did reduce a little bit and in 1978 he lost from Frank Zayn but he wasn’t in the same shape as he was in 1978. Now in 1980 he further reduced number of sets trying to experiment with his new understanding of uh uh lesser volume and he didn’t end up in good shape and he even admitted himself that he wasn’t in very good shape in 1980 when he lost. He was I think fifth. Uh now uh that story of heavy duty it’s a story. It’s a myth. It never worked. It was never practiced by by Mike Manser himself. I said that in a few videos. It’s the fact people who know him they they can tell you that he invented that simply from business purposes. He was a nice story, easy to sell, very attractive that you can achieve amazing results training uh 15 20 minutes and you know maybe a couple of times per week every muscle once in 10 days in two weeks later on even claimed that all you need is one set per muscle once in a month. You see the people were buying that because you know it would fit in their lifestyles but that never happened. I never I never come across anybody who did it. Uh people say Dorian did it. Dorian didn’t do that. No, Dorian was doing usually four sets per exercise. Usually four to five exercises per muscle group. Large muscle group. So that amounts to 20 25 sets per muscle group. Yes, he claimed that only the last set was the real one. Fine, we can call it all out set or set to failure. But it wasn’t the only set. So again, we have that number around 20 25. Uh this was uh obviously Arnold used to train uh train about 25 sets per uh per muscle per large muscle group. Even for smaller muscle groups he would do lot of sets maybe 20. And uh most of the bodybuilders who are training with that number of sets achieve phenomenal results from 70s up till now. The only difference is that Arnold train muscle twice per week and now people are training it once per week. So this is why people are recovering better and growing better and this is the biggest change that has arrived from 90s and the biggest positive change. So that number is also something that I responded well to and most of my clients 20 to 25 sets per uh large muscle groups like legs, chest, back. And when it comes to smaller muscle groups, I would advise anywhere from uh 8 to 12 or maybe 10 to 15 depending on individual. Okay, great. And then and what about rest times in between? Because I know that that Serge and Vince Coron, they would do very very limited rest periods between their sets. And even uh Jack Lane would talk about how he only he gave a maximum one minute between rep uh sets because he just basically didn’t have all that much time. He had an hour a day and then he needed to get this stuff done. when I was doing, you know, that 40 sets of of um of a certain muscle group, um I I I did have a significant period of rest, I you know, I was giving myself 3, four minutes between. And if I did that and gave myself a decent amount of rest period, uh I could just keep going. And you know, sometimes I I would do sort of super sets, I’d do bench, and then I’d go and do something else. I come back to bench and then go or circuit train and sort of do something else. And so I’d be doing other things and I’d end up working in 20 sets. So I wouldn’t just be sitting there necessarily the whole time, but I would be giving that muscle group some time to rest. And so um and when I did that shorten down the the um the rest period, it was it was much more challenging. I felt that that was really good. I really liked that. Um but what what do you find is um the best way to to approach that? Well, the the answer to that question again is not s as simple but uh it it is uh it is found within the understanding of intensity, right? So uh when people talk intensity they usually think about overload principle meaning oh more weights more intense workout. Now bodybuilding workout intensity in bodybuilding workout intensity means something else. There are three major factors uh for muscle growth. Number one is overload principle. Number two uh is mechanical tension. Number three is uh um metabolic stress. Now all these three principles need to be fulfilled in bodybuilding training in order to cause optimal hypertrophy. Overload principle is understood again wrongly because muscle becomes the means and the weight becomes the end. Therefore, people are using muscles in order to lift heavier. It should be all the way around. Muscle is the end and the weight is the means. So the right weight is the only weight that you should use in order to develop muscle. Now you will never you should never use the muscle as the means like powerlters do or weightlifters. They don’t care about hypertrophy. Their goal is to lift the weight and the muscle is the means. Now in bodybuilding is opposite. The weights are the means and the muscle muscle growth is the end. Now to achieve that among other things you need to talk you need to uh uh think about the rest between the sets. As I often say, when you’re talking about a workout or 25 sets, for example, you have 25 sets and these sets, imagine them as a chain. They’re all connected. Now, if you rest too long, that chain breaks. I say always that the next set should step on the tail of the previous one. Therefore, you need to rest as less is the the minimum necessary time. If you rest too long, the next set is not the next set is the next workout. This will happen to you. If you rest in three, four minutes, you can trend for hours. You completely recover quickly recover that muscle and you can carry on and on and on and on and on. But if you put that in a chain, if you want to make a workout, not workouts, then the rest between the sets should be uh necessary minimum. How much people are asking how how long if I say okay for biceps is 32 seconds. Oh, Nash said 32. Watch T. No, it doesn’t work like that. For smaller muscle groups, you’re going to rest less. What is the rest time? 30 to 60 seconds. You try 30 too short. Up it to 40, 50, 60. Oh, but it’s it was 65. Oh my god, I did it wrong. No, it’s not wrong. I’m just giving you an idea, a guidance. So, no more than a minute for a small muscle group. For a larger muscle group, especially legs, you can rest up to two minutes. I never rest longer than two minutes. Usually a minute, but you you will need to arrive to that point because to adapt your system, your respiratory system, your cardiovascular system, your muscular system, oxygen transportation to adapt, you need time. You can’t just go from resting three, four minutes and oh, Nesh said 30 seconds, now I’m going to go. And then you collapse there and call me next day. Say, oh, that was that’s a nonsense. I can’t do that. You need to adapt. So bear this in mind. Use this principle and don’t rest too long. Resting too long. This is the power lifting training method. If you want to keep lifting heavy, heavy, heavy in every next set, then rest three, four, five minutes. I see power lifted training in our gym. Sometimes they rest five, 10 minutes between the sets because they don’t care about muscle growth. But you will want to care about muscle growth. You want to put that those 20 sets together so they make sense. They’re called workout. They’re like a chain. U all these successful bodybuilders rested short period between the between the sets. Sometimes some rested less, some a bit longer, but nobody was there resting forever for minutes and minutes. Uh I did calls the other day and the guys I I said, “Can I join in?” He says, “Yes, I do a set.” He said, “Are you going to do now?” “Oh, no.” He says, “I’m resting.” “Are you resting?” “All right.” So I do I do three sets and he does one. I did six, he did two. I did nine, he did three. Mhm. Yeah. Look at his skulls. There is nothing there. Of course there is nothing there because it’s hard to if you this is this is another thing. Uh short rest between the sets is one of the three compounds of intensity. So shorter the rest more intense the workout. All right. Heavier the weight with the same number of sets and reps, more intense the workout. And also slower the pace, especially in the negative phase, more intense the workout. So you can make your workout much more intense by using the same weights but increasing the time and the tension, okay? And cutting the rest between the sets. And you will see how intense that will be. So this is intensity in bodybuilding. is not just lift lift lift heavier lift lift lift heavier is a is a powerlifting game is a weightlifting game has nothing to do with bodybuilding I think pe most of the people right now globally in the gyms are somewhere in between in some limbo they are not powerlifterss because they don’t look like one you have to really be genetically gifted for that particular sport and they’re not bodybuilders and they’re trying to achieve something I don’t know what something in the middle it’s not bodybuilding it’s not powerlifting but it’s probably good enough for Instagram shots and all that and this is where we are. So, they’re wasting their time. So, either be a powerlter or be a bodybuilder. What else is there? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Um, so that that was the thing, too. Obviously, high volume, low amount of rest, and I always wonder this because I never heard them talk about it, but you know, like surge yourself, these sorts of things. Um, and I sort of have an idea of the answer because I I think I saw one of your titles of your videos on the subject, but when when Serge was doing 40 sets of bench or or you know, a lot, you know, this high load, was this going to failure or was this just going to a certain how did he gauge when his his set was done? Um, if it was it to failure or to some other metric. It was never to failure. Okay. And I did a video that is on my YouTube channel which I say that uh training to failure is the biggest mistake in bodybuilding. Okay. It sounds quite harsh, isn’t it? Very controversial. But uh I’m not talking from out of the blue. I’m talking from experience obviously. Why do they say that? So what happens when you’re trying to failure, right? Imagine a set of 10 reps. So you do 10 reps and you can’t do 11. So basically 10 is the last one that you are struggling. This is called failure. Now what happens when you do that? First of all, what happens? What matters is that the last four to six reps are the good quality reps that cause hypertrophy. Not just the last one, last four to six. We still need to to define that. We need more uh cyber precision science to discover is it four or is it six. But at the moment the consensus is four to six. Last four to six. So let’s say you do 12 reps. The last rep is 12. This is failure. But four to six before that were all good quality uh reps that cause muscle hypertrophy. Now, when you go all out and you hit that 12th and you can’t do another one, you will stress your central nervous system a lot. So, next set you won’t be able to do the same number of reps. You will probably drop down to seven, eight. Again, you hit the last one and you probably do another set on five or six and you hit the last one. So, if you look at this, you’ve done three sets, right? And you won’t be able to do more than three exercises like this. If you go all out, try and you will see. And you will complete nine, let’s say 10 sets for the sake of an argument in which you will have last four reps to six reps that count. Mhm. So 10 sets times six, you’ve done 60 reps. That counts for muscle growth. Right now, what happens if you don’t go all out? If you don’t go to that last 12, maybe you stop on 10. Still the last four to six reps will be counted as productive reps. But the difference is that you can do more sets because you didn’t kill your nervous central nervous system. So you did more sets. You can do 20 sets. When you multiply 20 by six or by four or by five, take that one out of 20. So minus 20, you will end up with 100 productive reps comparing to 60 productive reps. The other benefit of not going to failure is that your central nervous system is fine. You are not you didn’t burn out. Okay? So you have completed more quality reps. This is the benefit of doing more sets. If you do 25 sets, even better. If you do 30, even better. So more quality reps for muscle growth rather than less. And the plus benefit, the bonus, your central nervous system is fine. You walk outside the gym, you feel great. Your muscle is dead, but you are alive. If you go to failure, you will be dead and your muscles won’t be dead. And this is the big difference. You’ve seen people finishing back or legs or chest or whatever and they’re walking like coming from the wall or something. Hardly walking down. So why? Because you have drained your nervous central nervous system. You’ve done something which is not good for you. It will take ages for that to recover. So every next session is going to be junk volume and this is where this all out going to failure people end up most of the time. So this is why Serge never did to failure. Jay Cutler for example another very clever bodybuilder modern bodybuilder never went to failure. Look Jay now Jay looks fantastic. Took in shape he’s big. He was always volume trainer and he never went to failure. What an amazing discovery. No, he’s not. Arnold never went to failure. Serge Nubra never went to failure. Sergea, one of the biggest ever went to failure. Regardless of number people, other people whoever was training with high number of sets never went to failure. So what happened to these guys? What happened to Robbie Robinson? Look at him. He’s almost 80 now. Looks amazing. still training the same. Albert Beckles the same. Leane the same. All these people who did volume, they are still out there still alive. No broken torn tendons, ligaments, not in the wheelchair. I mean, the message is too loud. Do not go to failure is too much and is not necessary. Mhm. It’s just trying to show off in the gym, screaming, falling on the ground, showing on theater that you are some sufferer, somebody who has done so. Nobody cares about that. It’s just ridiculous. Who cares what you’ve done? Who cares about your squats or deadlifts? Nobody cares. You’re just making yourself stupid. And this is what people do everywhere all the time. And look at them. And they look at all these legends which are usually on the walls, not these people who are screaming on the floor. And all these legends, they never did this. Never did this. I never went on to failure. That that thing to failure was another modern thing with invented by Arto Jones and then uh Mike Menser trying to fight probably some demons in their head and people probably do the same for whatever reasons. going to failure until you really cannot hold the weight anymore and the weight drops out of your hands. Oh, amazing. You’re another corner now. So, you’re going to film such a story of another hero who gave his life for the the world. No, it’s not like that. No, it’s not. No, that muscle that you train with right intensity requires certain stimulus as uh Lee Henny said stimulate do not obliterate. Beautifully. Yeah. Um well that definitely makes sense. I mean is it is it different for I mean you know I guess if you have very good recovery and you and you’re feeling good like does does that change the equation at all because when I now granted given myself a lot of rest so you know you know 3 4 minutes rest in between um I I would go to failure I felt good doing that and I actually didn’t want to leave the gym I I I felt better in the gym and I never wanted to leave the gym and so I felt quite good with that um when I tried shortening down the the rest period then yeah I I there was a point where I was maxing out and then couldn’t quite get 12 and then okay I’m doing 10 and I’m doing eight okay now I’m dropping the weight and doing that sort of thing but I still try to get to that and I felt you know fantastic workouts um is that you know because of and I you know if I was not eating this way I would not have that recovery I would not have that ability to do that I’ve eaten other ways I’ve eaten very clean omn diets and I have absolutely not been able to do workouts like that and I would be absolutely shattered. The way I’m eating now, I I feel better the harder I work. Um, is that does that change the math at all or is it still sort of that principle where you you’re you’re going to get more out of it in the long run if you if you sort of don’t quite go to failure. Hey guys, just want to take a second to thank our sponsor, Carnivore Bar. I don’t promote many products because honestly all you need to be healthy is to just eat meat. For those times that you’re out hiking, road tripping, or stuck at work and you want nutritious snack that is just meat, fat, and salt if you want it, the Carnivore Bar is a great option. So, I like this product not because it’s just pure meat, but also because I want the carnivore market to thrive as well. And the more we support meat only products, the more meatonly products there will be available in the mainstream. So, if this sounds like something you’d like to get behind, check it out using my discount code Anthony to get 10% off, which also applies to subscriptions, giving you 25% off total. All right, thanks guys. Well, as I mentioned to you, if you do 20 to 25 sets, you will have many uh many more uh quality reps that will uh help help stimulate hypertrophy. Now, you need to pay attention to other uh factors. For example, you need to pay attention to overload, which means if the weight that you’re using starts becoming light, you need to add a little bit. Uh I most of the time I use the same weight for every set. And uh if I do let’s say for upper body 8 to 12, I start with 12 reps and go 12, maybe 12 again or 11, then you got 10 and go nine and eight or seven. If I drop beforeh under eight, I stop. If I drop under eight in the fifth set, that’s my last set. If I drop in the sixth set, this is my last set. But now, if the day comes that I do first set and I can do 15 16 reps, clearly I’m going to start using a little bit heavier weight. So, you have to pay attention to that. This is one factor. The next one is time under tension. You have to make sure that you’re fully stretching and fully contracting the muscle. That mechanical tension is the the key to muscle growth. That has to happen. is not just to work that set in 10 seconds as most of the sets are. Most of the time people think they’re doing long set but they’re not. If you measure your set you will see very few sets will go over 20 seconds and the perfect time under tension is anywhere from 30 to 70 seconds. So to perform a set of 30 seconds will will shock a lot of people will really shock a lot of people after they finish that set. There there is not going to be much left. Not to mention 70 seconds. So you see how much is there. So it’s not just number of I feel good. I want to do more but wait a little bit. This this critical factors have to be taken into consideration. So you have something called passive tension. If that doesn’t happen your mechanical tension is not high enough. Then you have something like a combination of uh of multi- joint the isolating exercises which is absolutely necessary for many reasons. So all this has to be taken into consideration. Bodybuilding is a very very intelligent game. You know you said how is if I feel better should I take should I do more? I mean look you are an MD right? if you prescribe me antibiotics 500 milligrams four times per day and I said to you oh uh uh Dr. Anthony, I feel great. Can I take 1,000 four times four days per time per day? Four times per day. You look at me and say, wait a little bit. I given you a right dose. But I feel fine. But it doesn’t matter. So you can’t just think because you feel fine that you should do more. You don’t need to do more. You need to do better. But more and better are never going to be the same. Different. Yeah, better is the the the crux crux of the problem, right? Better there a lot of factors there. Time under tension, mechanical tension, rest between the sets, volume, uh speed, right? Mind muscle connection. People say to me, oh, what is mind muscle connection? I don’t know about your mind and your connection. I know about mind. You need to feel the muscle. Did you feel the muscle? And then they say, “Uh, I think I felt it.” No, you didn’t. You can’t think about feeling. Thinking and feelings are two different things. They they don’t work together. You know, when you burn yourself on the fire, you don’t go, “Oh, I think I burn myself.” No, you just jump like that and you say, “Oh, so if you didn’t feel that muscle, you’re not doing it properly. You’re doing too much weight too fast. You’re not going slowly down and you’re just moving that mechanically.” Maybe that has happened to you. This is why you can do so many sets plus rest between the sets. You can you can do whatever you want. I mean it’s it’s great. It can be a great fun. But we’re talking business here, aren’t we? Yeah. Grow muscle. If you want to grow muscle, I’m giving you principles from which you will definitely benefit because they are fundamental principles of muscle grow proven from 1960s to now in the real biggest experiment ever did in the real practice in real world. Yeah, they all did it and it works. Yeah, I’m I’m really interested to try all these sorts of things as well because um uh yeah, it’s it’s uh it’s exciting for me. So what so how do you tell how do you tell when you’re done with your set then? What what is that point? You because obviously it’s it’s easy to tell someone, okay, well you go to failure, we know where that is. You just get to the point you can’t move the weight anymore. So where where do you go instead? How do you know when to stop? How do you know when your set’s done? Well, again, it’s very difficult to say that because there are some attempts I come across people are saying, “Oh, you go all out. You measure your weight. You measure your number of sets, the reps, and then you do the equation. You calculate what will be three reps. Just forget about it. It’s just ridiculous. So let’s say let’s say you do bicep curls. You use whatever 35 kgs and you do 10, 11, 12 reps and you attempt to do the next one and you cannot do it. That was all outset. Now you have to develop that feeling when you are really going. You felt you’ve done a lot. You’ve done enough and now you know that if I do another rep that’s going to be the last one. I don’t have to do it. That will allow you to do more sets doing barbell curls. If you do all out set, I’ve done it so many times. You do all out set. You do 12 13 reps really all out to failure. You rest 30 40 seconds. The next set you will probably about seven, eight reps. It will be hard to do the third set. So you’re going to end up doing two sets for biceps curls. You go do machine curls, the same principle. You’re going to end up doing another two and do hammer curls, the same principle. You’re going to end up with six sets and that’s it. End of story. And you’re going to feel great and you’re going to feel dead, right? And you’re going to be exhausted. Now, the thing is you can also do different type of workouts. maybe not going to failure, but doing five sets of biceps curls and five sets of squat curls and five sets of hammer curls, you’re going to end up with 15 sets, but your central nervous system will be fine, but your arms will explode. So, not only from mechanical tension, but also from metabolic stress because there are different factors that cause muscle growth. that metabolic stress triggers growth hormone. Lactic acid triggers growth hormone as you know. And it’s not going to happen if you do six reps. It’s going to happen if you do more sets and more reps. And after that high volume workout, you will be producing more growth hormone than if you do just low volume, high intensity workout. So the benefits are simply overwhelming. Not to mention your uh safety of tendons and ligaments. So you see the benefit benefit benefit benefit. So too many pros hardly any com when you do it very high intensity also risk of injuries training to failure has has made people torn their muscles. Top bodybuilders have torn their muscles. Biceps, triceps, quads, chest, you name it, it has happened. Look, look Ronnie Coleman. Can you believe that? He’s now the pinnacle of his life basically when he’s finally making big money and the man is living in a wheelchair. Why was it necessary? But not at all. Not at all. This is is so transparent. He didn’t have to do it. So basically uh the risk of injuries is another big uh con against going to failure. Okay. Big one. Um, yeah, that makes sense. And um, okay, so basically you you get the feeling. Yeah. And and having lifted for a long time, I know that feeling. I know when I I get to the point where I’m I’m pushing one out and was like, I I could squeeze out one more. And, you know, so I squeeze that up. And if I’m not if I’m not working with a spotter, then I have to know my limit because obviously I don’t want to drop the weight on my neck. And so, okay, so I go up. Okay, that’s that’s my last one. I can squeeze that out and I know I can’t do another one because I I will fail on that one. Is Is that failure or would the next set be failure? Should I stop one before that? What do you think? You definitely have to stop before that because when you do that last one, especially with that uh four reps, which are very popular, you have to understand that uh every four rep is actually a junk volume and not just junk volume but extremely risky repetition. First of all, when your partner moves that weight, you you didn’t lift that weight. Half of that weight is lift by him. Second, your form is never going to be as good as in the good quality previous reps. Third, your your your risk of injury will increase dramatically. Proven everywhere. I’ve seen so many accidents. You know, over dozens of times in last few years, we had to call ambulance to come to the gym and take people away because you know when your when a bicep tendon uh explodes, it it is literally you can hear it and then the next thing you see the man collapses on the floor uh gets in shock. His biceps just get black within no in no time. And uh then you see him in few days in the cast and you know why what is this? What is this all about? Because he’s doing extra rep. Why? Why would you do extra rep? Arnold never did extra rep. Serge [ __ ] never did. I’ve watched him so many times. He never did. He was just perfect form slowly up and down. Never talking to anybody between sets. He would say guys all few of us sitting there staring at him watching. He said if you want to ask something you ask after I finish during my training session I don’t want to no questions nothing he would just sit and look no phones no destruction nothing like that so uh is not necessary the best in the world have done it without it what are you trying to achieve what are you trying to prove by going another rep I see them in the gym every day guys who don’t even have muscles attempt to lift weights, catastrophic form, uh, force reps, this reps. Where are the muscles? Well, non-existing. So, you don’t have to do it. It’s is silly. It’s is really completely unreasonable and uh I did I did a whole video on that. So, um you don’t have to do it, okay? No, your muscle doesn’t doesn’t need because if you don’t do it, you will do more sets. you’re going to have more quality reps. If you do five, six sets, when I do leg press, let’s say first exercise is my leg routine, I will do seven, eight sets, sometime up to 10 sets. So imagine if I drop below 12, I’m done. I go up to 30 in the beginning. So imagine how many reps you do in 10 sets. After 10 sets, my legs are double in size. I feel good. I’m not I’m not drained. I’m not dead. My legs will be very tired, but my central nervous system will be very happy. Yeah. Okay. So, so getting to that point before you would need a spotter to to help you. Um what about that last So, so if I were working without a spotter and I got to that point where I said like, “Okay, I can do one more and I have one more in me and I and I push that out and I’m able to get it up. No help.” Um obviously not trying past that. Is that the what I’m aiming for or or not even that far? Not even that far. No, you should be anywhere from anywhere one to three reps short of the of the failure. All right. Right. Okay. Because you will compensate with extra set or sets. Right. And then and the number of quality reps which is between four and six will multiply exponentially as you go higher number of sets. This is why whenever people increase number of sets, drop the weight, they come after couple of weeks and says, “Oh my god, Nash, look at my arms.” Mhm. Oh, really? What happened? Well, I started doing more sets. As you said, the weights the weights uh dropped. So, who cares about the weights? You think if Michelangelo had a bigger chisel and a hammer would do better, David? No, he doesn’t work like that. These are your tools is how you use your tools. Oh, light and heavy. So, the world is now split between I can bench four plates or I can only bench one. Really, who cares? Let me see the final product. Let me see the David. David is the key. Moses as well. See, Michelangelo did it with certain tools. If they were bigger, they wouldn’t be better status, right? So, we need to distinguish the difference between means and ends. But for some reason in a in a bodybuilding world, lifting has still remained to be the the uh divine uh possibility and achievement lifting. But bodybuilding is more about lowering. Weightlifting in power lifting in the name it says is lifting. But in bodybuilding is more about lowering because of that passive tension. You know this is very important. Mechanical tension is the key to muscle growth. Your muscle will never grow. Now during uh concentric contraction. This is called active tension. When you’re lowering during eccentric you have passive tension. Now guess which tension contributes more to muscle growth. Passive tension contributes yeah between 60 and 70% to muscle growth. Bactive tension contributes 30 to 40%. So here we go. Now the choice is out there. Yeah. Yeah. I guess that’s the thing too. and and and of course we’re we’re talking specifically about hypertrophy and um and that that makes perfect sense and that that’s something that that um you know you hear a lot is that you know you you focus on the eccentric you know the passive sort of and even sometimes when people are are building up to doing pull-ups you know when you’re just you’re just starting out maybe you’re doing some lat pull downs and things like that now you’re trying to do pull-ups and maybe you can’t even pull yourself up but you can control your weight going down and then you can sort of do uh build some muscles that way you build your strength and then eventually you can get strong enough to pull yourself up. Um I always sort of you know I think it’s it sort of in my nature as like a competitive athlete rugby player that you know something about just killing that last just doing everything you can and I sort of have that mentality of when I’m in on the field and I’m pushing myself and I’m in pain. I just want to stop. It’s just torture, but I was like, I’m going to kill him going. It’s just like I’m not going to let like I I may die, but I’m taking this guy with me. And it’s like that sort of mentality of sort of taking that into weight training. And that’s something I’m going to have to probably um you know, retrain and get that out of my head. Um and um because again, you know, it’s what are your goals? You know, are you are you just trying to just just aggression out or are you trying to you know, you know, build a good physique? Good that you said it. I’m going to die or I’m going to take this guy out. So, if you do that crazy all out set, you can say I’m going to do this and I’m going to take my tendon out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There’s that. Yeah. They did it so many times. Yeah. This is not necessary. It’s you know when you understand that that to stimulate growth you don’t need to go to failure. Everything changes. The life becomes happier place because you stimulate. You don’t obliterate. That muscle didn’t do anything wrong to you. You don’t need to be the hell out of it. Yeah. Need to give him a a good training session. Not like what Dorian promotes to, you know, kill the m he literally did kill them few of them. So, uh you know, I will take this guy out, but I’ll take my tendon out as well. So, I’ll do this set. But then it is said, you know, he could have been around for longer. He will be much better shape now and and health and everything because this is serious injuries, you know, you know how big those injuries are. This is disability, right? Yeah, absolutely. Um, yeah, I was going to say too, um, as a as a caveat to, uh, athletes out there, you know, I’ve worked with some athletes, um, there it’s a it’s such a great thing you brought up the eccentric versus concentric uh, part of the lift, you know, where you’re contracting the muscle or even sort of passively extending, you know, at lengthening the muscle. You get more hypertrophy when you’re lengthening that muscle under tension quite a lot more. And for most people, yes, that’s fine. You start building up your muscle base for younger um people and athletes, you need to build up that muscle base. Um but then sometimes for like things like sprinters or you’re trying to work on your speed. If you build up a lot of that muscle, then uh there’s this strength to weight ratio as well and that can actually slow you down on the field. So there’s this idea of especially I mentioned the hexar deadlift that was something that was a top trainer for the NFL. um basically all the top prospects going into the NFL combine. He would train them for about 8 weeks and he would get these guys faster. You drop like half a second off their 40 time and he said they have a lot of plyometric work and all these different sorts of things. But really like 95% of it he used was using the hexar deadlift on just the concentric and then you drop it and they just lift and drop and lift and drop and that built up strength but not bulk. And so it kept their weight down but their strength up and so that strength to weight ratio increased and they and they would get faster. And um and so there are if you understand the physiology, if you understand how the body works and and the muscle systems work and how you can get the end result that you want, there’s there’s so much there that you can do as an athlete. If you’re trying to build hypertrophy, if you’re trying to build a structured um picturesque physique, then you know this is this is the way there’s the way to do that. If you want to have more uh you know changes in sort of specific athletic competition there are different ways of training for that as well but it’s understanding the principles like you said understanding how the body works how the physiology works and then you can manip then you can not necessarily manipulate but you can uh modify workouts to to fit exactly what your end goal is and um I think that’s that’s really important is um you know understanding how the how your body works so that you can get out of it what you Exactly. Absolutely. Yeah. And the reason why that passive tension is so important is that uh during concentric contraction you you use you use um muscle filaments mactin actin and meosin. So these are contractive filaments. They they contract the muscle. But the biggest proteins in the body are actually titans. Titans are only stimulated when the muscle is fully stretched under resistance. And this is why the uh eentric op contraction of passive tension actually contribute to more hypertrophy than just contracting it without triggering the growth of titans. So um it’s very simple once you understand these things. It’s not it’s not incomplicated. It’s just to apply in the practice and funny enough the best methods that I have mentioned and the best um uh fundamentals of intensity are at the same time the safest. So they not just contribute to more muscle growth, they contribute to more safety and also longevity. So you can carry on training for the rest of your life with fantastic results. I have a client who is almost 80 years old and he’s one of the best looking guys in the gym. I will send you his pictures to you. You won’t believe it. But uh as I said, you know, it’s not just I will take this set and give my 10 out. That’s a good phrase, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. You you it’s your invention actually. I just build build up on this. Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s not like that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so what and so, okay, let’s say you’re doing one one muscle group a week. Um, short reps or short rest periods, lots of reps, not quite going to failure, doing a lot of sets. Um, how do you split that up over the week? I mean, what what sort of muscle groups are you are you trying to pair chest with triceps because you sort of work similar sort of muscle groups as you’re doing a bench press or chest. tend to use that or how would you you split that up with the smaller muscle groups as well? Well, uh there are there are two two training splits that I advocate when I advise people uh is 4 day training split and five day training split. So 4 day training split will be for intermediates let’s say advanced but not very advanced right and the four day split is and also for most of the naturals as well. Uh it would be let’s say doing a chest and biceps day one legs day two then take day off then you do back and then after back you do shoulders and triceps and you take two days off. So this would be four days per week three days off. And another one which is something that I do and most all my advanced clients are doing is five day training split. So day one is chest and abs. Uh day two is legs. Always day off after legs. Then day uh three third session is back. Fourth session shoulders. Fifth session uh arms and then day off. So this is how I split muscles and I find I mean that that can be also individual people can do different. I would only advise that that you do uh take that off after legs because it makes sense and uh don’t do don’t do arms before before you do chest. So you you do back. So this is why I put arms at the as the last training session of the week on Saturday and then Sunday I have off and on Monday I do chest again. Okay. People people often ask uh oh why don’t you put pushpull on all that? Well push pushpull is okay in certain stages but it’s not necessarily the most advanced uh training system. So most advanced would be as I mentioned five times per week. U pushpull is not because you cannot do enough exercises per muscle group. So how I’m going to do five movements for chest, five for shoulders and three for triceps if I put them together. So it’s 13 exercises. If I do five sets each body what is going that going to end up like 60 70 sets. It just doesn’t make sense. But if you do three movements for chest, two for shoulders, two for triceps, three for sets each, then you can patch it up. But it’s not going to be optimal, right? For a particular period in your development, it’s fine. But as you grow up, as you progress, as you become more advanced, the intensity increases, form increases, improves, you will need, you will stress yourself more and you will need more more more time to rest. Therefore, you need to allow more time and you will end up doing either four or five times per week. Uh people confuse triceps uh involvement with triceps training when it comes to chest. If you do chest properly, you will use your triceps up to the point, but you will never train your triceps. You will never fully stretch and fully contract your triceps, and you should not be using your triceps much at all anyway. Now people perform bench press by bringing their elbows in right and then they’re going to use their triceps. But this is not the trajectory of the movement for chest because chest don’t stretch with the humorus down. You need to lift the humorus up and this is chest right? So if you bring humorus down the biomechanics this movement is shoulder front shoulder. So as soon as you go inside more inside you go that movement that you call bench press is going to be more shoulder press understand and your triceps will more. So if you do chest properly if you understand about biomechanics you you have to move your elbows to the side fully stretch your muscle and then perform the exercise. Triceps doesn’t do much there. Yes it gets involved up to the point but it’s never fully trained. This is why you have to train triceps fully in the separate day. The same applies to biceps. Oh, I train back. I feel my biceps a lot. No, no, you’re not training. Then you’re training with biceps under grip close. That’s a biceps exercise. Mike uses for biceps. Why would you do biceps exercise? Why would you involve biceps in doing back? Yes, you’re Dorian Yates, your god. Just leave it as it was. Don’t try to explain things because it doesn’t work well. If you want to attack that latisimus dorsai muscle, your humorus have to be in different position there. You can’t hold the bar u under grip. So you need to have wide grip in order to hit latisimus dorsai. This is how your latisimus dorsai muscle fully stretches. Now close grip. Yes. But the grip outside and also with close grip you will still stimulate more teras major teras minor but not latisimus dorsai. This is why you need to do two pulls. So you’re not using your biceps. You are engaging it but you’re not training it. This is why you have to train it separately. And this is why because they’re smaller muscles and they’ve been engaged up to the point I advise to do less sets. So everything fits perfectly once you understand. But you know biomechanics is another big issue. Not many people understand that people are just doing training ad hoc you know looking around and copying like other species in nature just copy what other people do and they you know I’m going to do the same but it just doesn’t work like that. There are complicated exercises like lateral races for example the most complicated exercise in bodybuild I never saw anybody doing it right. Very few people. Seriously. Yeah. Yeah, because they don’t understand what what lateral deltoid does. How does that move humorus and how to avoid turning lateral raises into into the front shoulder contraction uh etc etc. There are many other movements, chest, legs, not to mention squatting and more complicated exercises. But um basically this is why the the split that I advise is the is the is something that applies to most of the people most of the time and uh is not just beneficial but is also safe and allows enough time for recovery and super compensation. Right. But but you wouldn’t you and so you wouldn’t do triceps with with chest though. You would you would definitely separate those out or or or if you had enough time biceps with back and things like that as well. You would want you’d want to separate those out or could you set those up on the same day in the in the four day split? You can do that. Yes, you can do chest and triceps. Uh you can do back and biceps but then shoulders will be on their own. Mhm. Uh and I would rather put smaller muscle with shoulders because shoulders are relatively smaller muscle group. Okay. So the stress level of I would rather have the same uh stress impact on every session rather than having a big stress chest and triceps and then small stress on shoulders only. So okay. Yeah. But this four day split can can accommodate that for whatever reasons if if you want to do it. It’s not it’s not end of the world. Mhm. It’s just that in that scenario, you will be training shoulders on their own. Okay. All right. And then Okay. And and that and that’s your split that you’re doing now, that fiveday split. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Very good. For decades. Yeah. Well, very good. Um Okay, great. Well, well, thank you so much for that. That’s that’s been fascinating. I mean, I got that’s sort of just me getting to pick your brain on things that I wanted to know about and hopefully hopefully that was interesting for people as well. Um, uh, Dr. Joseph Yos, thank you so much for that. Um, I I would imagine that you have, uh, books on training as well. Where can people find those and, uh, and everything else you do? Yes, thank you very much for having me first of all and then, uh, uh, yes, my YouTube channel is also Dr. Nashich and people can see um many different um videos on covering all all subjects basically and uh ebooks are available training ebooks nutritional ebooks obviously they’re available on my website which is nashfittraining.com so whoever is interested may uh feel free to uh get to my website and see if there is anything they think it may help them and I believe there is a lot of things Very good. Well, we’ll put the the links for all those below and I encourage people to go and check out your channel because I’ve I’ve definitely learned a lot. Um, and you know, seen things that I sort of had an idea about and heard peripherally about, you know, the different training styles of of these golden ner bodybuilders, but then, you know, hearing it from the horse’s mouth has been fantastic. So, thank you so much for that. You’re very welcome and thank you also for having me. Not a problem. Thank you. All right. Thank you everybody. Hope you enjoyed that. Please do uh hit the like and subscribe if you haven’t. Leave a comment and share this with anybody who wants to get in the best shape that they can. Thanks a lot everyone. See you next time. Hey guys, thank you very much for taking the time out to listen to what I had to say. If you like it, then please like and subscribe to my YouTube channel and podcast. And if you’re on YouTube, then please hit that little bell and subscribe and that’ll let you know anytime I have a new video out, which should be every week, if not more. 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