Glute Training: What the Research Says | ETP#121

[Aaron Straker]: 0:30

What's up guys, happy Tuesday. Welcome back to another episode of Eat, Train, Prosper. Today, Brian and I are talking about glutes. So there is some pretty decently new, or recent is the word I'm looking for, research, comparing some of the different exercises and things for maximizing or making the most gains out of the glutes. That as, of course, as always in this space are people are throwing in their opinions, getting a little bit of a. running the circles, I should say. So we will converse on some of this, hopefully try to extrapolate some of our takeaways in recommended kind of courses of action as always. But before we get into this, Brian, what's going on?

[Bryan]: 1:13

Yeah, it's been a while since we've done one of these kind of research breakdown discussion things. So I'm excited to get back into this. This was kind of part of our program every month or two for a while. And then we got away from it. But it's good stuff. So, yeah, before we get into all of that, I finally made a decision on cardio verse weights. And I know everyone has been sitting on the edge of their seat, biting their nails, waiting for this decision. Um, if you guys hadn't gathered from, you know, the, the way I was speaking, uh, last week or followed my stories, uh, my heart pun intended is sort of with cardio at the moment and, um, it's just for like 2.5 months, potentially. Um, I don't know what will happen after that, but I have this race in October. And I just figure with the race coming up and with. the poor VO2 max result that I talked about last week. Along with just, I honestly am kind of enjoying the pursuit of cardio. I've decided to just go kind of all in on cardio. Not that means that I'm gonna completely stop weightlifting, because I think that would be asinine, and I couldn't imagine doing something like that. But I am going to place the priority in my week. optimized cardio performance. And so I think my biggest hesitation in deciding this in the last couple of weeks has been mostly, well, twofold kind of similar sentiments, but I have Brian's program and that's my version of optimized hypertrophy training. And so I had a very big sense of guilt that am I gonna be putting out like what I'm actually doing, which is what I've been doing. Or am I going to put out my continued version of optimized training? And then the second one being that my platform is also kind of based on hypertrophy training. And I had a little bit of self doubt about my followers and God, such a weird thing to say, but whether they would like follow me through this new journey. And I had a man, so many people reach out when I expressed this and basically were like, you're being stupid. Like, of course we're going to follow you. Like you're not. just deciding to do cardio for the rest of your life and like completely changing. And I kind of compared it a little bit to when I left CrossFit and went into hypertrophy and I had to really reinvent myself. I lost a ton of followers, like a lot of my CrossFit followers dipped. And I was kind of scared of the same thing, but I was reassured by the followers that it's all good, that they'll follow me through this journey and it's just a short term and all this stuff. So that was cool, that was reassuring. Um, with this decision, I have decided to buy a new bike. Um, currently I only have a mountain bike, which is, you know, fat tires, very nubby, a heavy frame. It's not ideal for going fast. Um, and that's what I've been using for all of my training. So I finally bit the bullet and bought a gravel bike, which is kind of like a hybrid between a mountain bike and a racing bike. The tires are like a hybrid between the two the handlebars are set up more like a racing bike so they have the under bar as they call it that kind of like loops under so you can get in a little bit more of a aerodynamic position and the bike is lighter and faster has more gear shifting Options and stuff like that like my mountain bike only has 11 gears so I can't actually pedal Like my legs are strong, which is great because of all the weightlifting. So I can put the mountain bike on the heaviest, hardest gear and I can still crank on it pretty well. And so I was looking for a bike that would allow me to have a gear set where I can't actually just put it on the hardest gear and just ride around town that way. Um, and so the gravel bike is going to supply that. So I ordered it from Canyon, which is an online order company only. They're based in Carlsbad. I kind of wish I still lived in San Diego so I could actually go test ride because you can't test ride canyons anywhere unless you're in Carlsbad. But I tested seven bikes that are along the same line as the Canyon one, as far as like price range and the things I would be looking for in the bike. And ultimately, I talked to a number of people, watched a bunch of YouTube reviews, and decided that I would just try the Canyon one, even though I didn't get to actually try it. I think it's gonna be just fine for me. So, excited for that in the next week or two to arrive. Yesterday, I did 33 miles on my mountain bike, which is the longest mileage I've ever done in my life. I'd done 30 twice before this. So I did 33 miles, it was mostly gravel, 15 miles an hour. Felt really, really good about that. And then the last piece of this cardio thing is that my body weight is dropping and, you know, it's an intended consequence of focusing on cardio. Like it's going to make me better at cardio. But the interesting thing is that I'm not actually at the moment, like purposefully trying to lose weight. I'm actually like, I'm stuffed every night. If you look at my... nutrition tracking sheet, most of my days are overfed. I have a big red mark that's like overfed. And then I wake up the morning and my body weights less. And then I'm overfed again and I just lose more weight. And so that's been an interesting thing for me too because usually overfed means I'm gonna gain weight and I lose weight when I'm underfed. But I feel overfed and yet I'm losing weight. So that's been kind of a weird thing. I don't know. At some point, I think that's gonna stop. But for the last month or so, it's been trending down and I had my first... weigh in under 190 pounds two days ago. I'm back up above 190 now, but yeah, 189.6, and I don't see that stopping anytime soon. The last update for me is how is my lifting going with all of this cardio? Because I know everyone is curious. And for the first time in ages, I mean, I can't even remember the last time I failed to progress on something, specifically as it relates to this hack squat that I have in my basement. 540 times six is my all time PR. I hit it three weeks ago before I left for Wisconsin. And this is, you know, with the heel wedges and the feet low and the three second pause at the bottom and all that. So I went up to 550 yesterday and I only got five reps. And then I did a second set and I got five reps again. I tried the sixth one and I failed it. So granted I did go up 10 pounds, but I lost a rep. In this case, I think 10 pounds is probably only worth like a quarter rep because it's from 540 to 550. So the percentage increase is like. 1%, 1.5%, something like that. It's a number that I should have, if I was in a caloric maintenance state, I probably should have been able to hit 550 for six since I hit 540 for six. So in a sense, I think I'm seeing a little bit of impact from that. Tough to say, I'll see how next week goes. But ultimately my plan is to continue delivering Brian's program as the optimized version of hypertrophy the way I see it. And then I'm just gonna take it upon myself to modify Brian's program as I need to do week to week or session to session, whether that is decreasing volume, whether that is working slightly further from failure, or whether that's just decreasing frequency. And so that's been the approach that I think I'm gonna take most likely is instead of trying to hit four sessions a week, I'm probably just gonna span those out over eight or nine days. So essentially I'll be getting about three sessions a week in, and that gives me a lot more freedom to place. VO2 max intervals and my other kind of harder bike sessions around that. So kind of a long update, but that is what is going on with me.

[Aaron Straker]: 9:16

I have a couple quick things on the back of what you said for your body weight, and then I don't want to delve too much into it because I want to get into the butt stuff. So I always have this saying that when people talk about a body fat settling point or your body weight settling point, and I always make the argument that that's representative of your current environment. You change that environment, that body fat percentage, and that body weight changes. And you created this... subjective food tracking, you know, metric that you use, underfed, overfed, satiated.

[Bryan]: 9:52

Satisfied,

[Aaron Straker]: 9:52

This is satisfied.

[Bryan]: 9:53

satisfied,

[Aaron Straker]: 9:54

Okay, yeah,

[Bryan]: 9:54

yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 9:54

thank you. Based off of your current activity levels and stuff like that of your training. As this training has changed and you're obviously putting out much more caloric expenditure, well, I don't want to say that your subjective perceptions of your overfed or whatever, your expenditure has changed. But we can call that significantly. And now, even though you are subjectively overfed, that is still technically a deficit as your body

[Bryan]: 10:21

Correct,

[Aaron Straker]: 10:22

weight

[Bryan]: 10:22

yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 10:22

is decreasing.

[Bryan]: 10:23

Yes, no, I mean, I'm with you 100%. I just think it's amazing that I can be losing weight but feeling stuffed. Like that dichotomy to me is crazy because in the past, I've always had such an acute, good understanding of what I'm putting in my body and how that relates to what my body weight is going to do. And this is just a new surprising twist where I think eventually my body's gonna catch up and like I'm... probably going to get hungry if I continue to lose weight. But this last month has been this weird, I guess, honeymoon phase, if you wanna call it that, where I'm losing weight but not trying to. So yeah, it is what it is, you know?

[Aaron Straker]: 11:06

Yeah, I'm interested to see how the next two and a half months go. Obviously, we'll have plenty of conversation about it. And I think it will be very interesting when we have the like, okay, race is over, done. What does the future look like? I think one last thing, and then I'll go. When you were talking about like, how should I prioritize the cardio? Should I go back to lifting? One thing that you said that I think is important that we kind of point out for the listeners is you said, I am enjoying this new challenge and pursuit. And I think like that is really such a good way when you have, when you are trying to make that decision whenever you're like, Hey, I'm enjoying this, right? Of course it's, I, when you said that, I was like, yeah, that's 100% the right thing to do. It's a new challenge and endeavor, especially for someone like you who loves to explore, you know, those sides of things. That's fantastic. And let's say in a worst case scenario, you, you know, sacrifice some gains for fuel substrate sort of thing. It's nothing that you won't be able to gain back within like. eight weeks of returning to a training prioritization.

[Bryan]: 12:07

That was a lot of the feedback I got from the people on Instagram as well, was kind of like, what do you have to lose? Like, even if you lose five pounds of muscle, like who cares, it'll come back in a matter of weeks once you kind of get your fuel back in order and go back to training optimally and stuff. I can pretty confidently say right now, most likely, that once this 2.5 month thing is over, I am going to continue doing zone two work because I find it so productive for just my life in general and I enjoy, you know, the kind of the tranquility of it. I'll continue doing that three or four times a week for health, but I think you can almost. put a nail in it that I'm going to stop doing all the crazy VO2 max interval stuff because I don't enjoy it. I don't look forward to it. And so yeah, I think it's more of like a training tool for performance optimization. And it's not something that I intend to do year round.

[Aaron Straker]: 13:02

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 13:03

Cool, what's going on with you?

[Aaron Straker]: 13:04

Anything else from, okay. So the first thing, and I always make this joke, but we continue to be quite poor at it. The third class of the online coaching upgrade will have just started by the time this episode comes out. If that sounds interesting to you, you can go to theonlinecoachingupgrade.com, find out more about it. You can ping me on Instagram, you can email me. Everything that is in the course. The resources, everything that we offer is on that homepage. But here's the thing, it may be sold out by the time this episode airs. So I can't

[Bryan]: 13:38

Hehehehe

[Aaron Straker]: 13:39

guarantee anything, but worst case scenario, just ping me and I can give you a thumbs up or put you on the wait list for the one that will launch after. So that is my collaborative project with Jackson Piaz. It's been a lot of fun to really give back and it's been cool. Personally, now that I've been, you know, in this long enough that I've covered enough ground to be able to be like, I built this thing over this, like so many years and so many clients and iterations and stuff, and now have it as like a resource that I can offer to other coaches in the space. So it's a very, very cool for me. And then we have, you know, great reviews and stuff from the coaches in the first two classes as well on the website.

[Bryan]: 14:23

It'd be a good problem to have to say, hey, it might be full, you know, catch you on the next

[Aaron Straker]: 14:28

Yeah,

[Bryan]: 14:28

round. Ha ha ha.

[Aaron Straker]: 14:30

yeah, and we cap it for quality and stuff because we do a big live coaching call with everyone at the end And we want to make sure that everyone can get all of their questions and stuff answered So we don't want you know 40 50 people on it or anything Okay, so on last week's episode Brian convinced me to deload this week because I was having a lot of that psychological stress and stuff and I was like, okay You know, I think it's time I had a bro date planned with my friend Brandon, who's like a really, he's a big natural bodybuilder out of Australia. He lives here now, but it was like, it was a session I was really looking forward to. He's, we were like, he's a little bit bigger than me, which is quite impressive because I'm like historically damn near the biggest I've ever been. And he was still bigger than I was, but that was like the difference of like someone who's like a Ben in the hardcore natural bodybuilding game, like for years. We're probably the same height. He's maybe an inch taller or shorter than me, but he had like a better body composition at over 220 pounds.

[Bryan]: 15:33

That's insane. I mean, I've

[Aaron Straker]: 15:35

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 15:35

seen him, I follow him, and I've listened to him on some podcasts. I'm very well aware of Brandon Kempter, and I've always been impressed by him, but that's crazy to hear and for to hear, yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 15:47

Yeah, it was pretty like upper body, some things we were like, decently comparable. I'm sure in like better shape, he would blow me out of the water, but it wasn't like your arms are twice the size of mine sort of thing. But when we got to lower body, like his quads and stuff were like, it was a whole different league. So anyway, great training session. Maybe we'll have them on the podcast one day. It would be a really cool conversation to have. And we swung for the fences. Like we got after it. And I, we had a couple sets of one and one quarter squats on like a leverage squat machine. So it's actually a pretty good leverage squat. And after the third set, I just like pushed a little bit too hard and I got like that sustained like cortisol fight or flight response. Like I felt like the hair on the back of my neck go up and it like didn't go away. And my heart rate was super, super elevated. I had to skip our next exercise. We were supposed to go do RDLs and like, I still, I was like, I can't. I had that like, literally that post-crossfit workout feel and I was like, I just gotta sit here, you know? And I remember I left my timer on because I was timing our sets and my phone or my timer on my watch was at 10 minutes. So it had been 10 minutes after the last set and my heart rate was still in the 130s.

[Bryan]: 17:07

Wow.

[Aaron Straker]: 17:08

And I was

[Bryan]: 17:09

That's

[Aaron Straker]: 17:09

like,

[Bryan]: 17:09

some

[Aaron Straker]: 17:09

I

[Bryan]: 17:09

over

[Aaron Straker]: 17:09

was like

[Bryan]: 17:09

training

[Aaron Straker]: 17:09

some.

[Bryan]: 17:10

shit right there, dude. Heheheheh.

[Aaron Straker]: 17:11

I was like, something's wrong. We did two sets on the hamstring curl, and my hamstrings were wrecked, wrecked from two sets seated. So anyway, I'm like, okay, I felt kind of weird. I got pumped a bunch of water. We went and got some food. I wake up the next morning and I'm like sick. I'm like, I get the nasal thing, it's Sunday. I'm like, oh, okay, that's why training was feeling like that. I was like, kind of redlining. And then Monday comes around and I'm like, Sick, sick. I wake up to pee. My, and what's strange is my calves are in a world of pain. Like top three doms of my entire life, pain. I

[Bryan]: 17:52

Did you even train,

[Aaron Straker]: 17:53

couldn't even

[Bryan]: 17:53

Kevs?

[Aaron Straker]: 17:53

get my fucking

[Bryan]: 17:53

Okay,

[Aaron Straker]: 17:54

feet, yeah we did, we started with calves. But

[Bryan]: 17:56

okay.

[Aaron Straker]: 17:56

we only did three sets. I couldn't even get my feet flat on the ground with my weight. I had to like walk on my tippy toes so that they didn't

[Bryan]: 18:02

Oh

[Aaron Straker]: 18:02

stretch

[Bryan]: 18:02

man.

[Aaron Straker]: 18:02

to the fucking bathroom. And like my nose is all blocked up and stuff. And I was like, oh great. And it's like my busiest day of the week. I was like, I am in for a fucking day here. So anyway, I did deload because life deloaded for me as I just ran the flu a little bit too close to the sun for too long. My body, I got sick, so I'm sick. You can probably hear it in my voice a little bit. And I am deloading this week. I haven't been to the gym. I did actually go today. I went in the sauna and just rode the bike for like 30 minutes just to get like some, my body moving a little bit. And hopefully tomorrow I'll feel. pretty damn back to normal.

[Bryan]: 18:41

What's

[Aaron Straker]: 18:41

Without,

[Bryan]: 18:41

the plan

[Aaron Straker]: 18:41

besides

[Bryan]: 18:42

as far

[Aaron Straker]: 18:42

the,

[Bryan]: 18:42

as getting

[Aaron Straker]: 18:42

besides

[Bryan]: 18:42

back into training?

[Aaron Straker]: 18:45

the. I will skip lower body until the end of the week and then I'll do like a 70% sort of one. And what I'm going to do is just reduce loads in cap reps. So like tomorrow I'll probably do a upper my push session and I'll just reduce load by probably like 20% and then. cap, not push past the top end of my rep range. I'll still like my top set back off, but like my top set, the cap is at like 10. So I'll just hit those 10 reps with, you know, 20, 25% lighter load and stick to that. No intensity techniques, not trained to failure or anything like that.

[Bryan]: 19:25

Is the plan to keep more or less the same training protocol going into your The start of this diet or whatever it is going to be

[Aaron Straker]: 19:34

I'm on the fence, I haven't quite decided yet. I have been getting the itch to rotate in some different things. So we did officially start the diet, but my diet's starting at 3,000 calories. Like, it's

[Bryan]: 19:49

Tough life,

[Aaron Straker]: 19:49

hardly

[Bryan]: 19:49

yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 19:49

a diet, you know what I mean? So I know if I do keep things the same, I should have zero issues progressing for at least, I might be able to get another three, four weeks. and I was reaching some loads where I was like, I wanted to give them efforts just to establish new PRs, essentially, because I was, you know, at lifetime PRs on some things. So we'll kind of see, and then I probably will change some training up just to be a little bit more, a little bit more geared for some of my goals and stuff and some of my concerns with the deficit in terms of like mostly my legs and preserving quad size there.

[Bryan]: 20:29

Cool, sounds good.

[Aaron Straker]: 20:31

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 20:33

Is that it?

[Aaron Straker]: 20:35

That's it for my updates.

[Bryan]: 20:38

Sweet, let's talk bots.

[Aaron Straker]: 20:42

Let's do it.

[Bryan]: 20:44

There's two studies that are interesting that we're going to focus on today. The first one is the one that just came out from Daniel Plotkin as the main author, 2023, and it was funded by Brett Contreras and Menno Henselmans, which I'm just going to leave out there. And you guys can kind of... take from that what you will as we go through it. The study was officially called Hip Thrust and Back Squat Training, Elicit Similar Gluteus Muscle Hypertrophy, and Transfer Similarly to the Deadlift. It's interesting that they put in that second part because I feel like that's such like an under-reported piece of the study or an under-discussed part of it. I kind of don't really care about it. But the other study is by Cassiano and colleagues, also from 2023. and it's called the addition of the barbell hip thrust is effective for enhancing gluteus maximus hypertrophy in young women. So those are the two studies we're going to kind of go over to go over and delve into today. Let's start with the Daniel Plotkin one from Brett Contreras and Menno Henselmans. And essentially this one, both of them were untrained women. They were untrained. I don't know if they were all on women, but they were definitely untrained. The first study here was nine weeks long, and they had 18 people do hip thrusts and 16 people do squats. Over the course of the nine weeks, they stated that each person did between 15 and 17 sessions, meaning that they were averaging just under two sessions a week. I believe that the setup of this had them just do one session the first week as just to ensure I guess that there wasn't too much muscle damage or soreness, but that's a key thing that I think we're going to discuss as we get going through this. And we do have to remember these are untrained people here. They accessed muscle growth through MRI and they tested three RM loads on the deadlift and an isometric strength test. three RM loads on the movement that they did that they were training. So actually, they did three RM loads on both movements. So whether you did a squat or a hip thrust, at the end of the test of the study, you would do a three RM on both the squat and the hip thrust and the deadlift and an isometric strength test against a wall. So a decent number of strength assessments for a hypertrophy based study, but Yeah, anything on any thoughts on any of that before I get into kind of some of the results here.

[Aaron Straker]: 23:34

Yeah, I mean, and I guess before I get into it, I don't want it to seem like I'm a fucking negative Nancy or anything like that, but just, there's so many things that, it's just hard for me to be like, it's, you take 10, you get 10 weeks, you get untrained people, 10 weeks, right?

[Bryan]: 23:54

nine weeks.

[Aaron Straker]: 23:54

Only two sessions per week, right? And then we're taking three rep max efforts after 10 weeks, like two months of training. and then extrapolating this as... information that we should base the people who are in the iron game off of, I just feel like that's the limitation to some of these. And we're going to go through it with a grain of salt, I would say. And that's my thoughts so far. I do think they were all women in both groups. I know

[Bryan]: 24:31

Okay,

[Aaron Straker]: 24:31

in the

[Bryan]: 24:31

yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 24:31

second

[Bryan]: 24:31

I believe.

[Aaron Straker]: 24:32

study they were all women.

[Bryan]: 24:34

Yeah, I'm not sure on the first study. They were just untrained. I actually think there might have been some males in there, but I don't remember specifically from this study. Anytime I read like two somewhat similar studies back to back and like kind of cram for a podcast like this, I

[Aaron Straker]: 24:47

You're

[Bryan]: 24:47

always

[Aaron Straker]: 24:47

nothing.

[Bryan]: 24:48

feel like I like mix and match information.

[Aaron Straker]: 24:51

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 24:51

Anyway, so the result that I think everyone would have expected is that the strength gained was specific to the movement. performed, meaning if you were training hip thrusts, you got stronger at hip thrusts, and if you were performing squats, you got stronger at squats. Both groups actually tested similarly on the deadlift, which I find somewhat interesting, but maybe not super surprising. Yeah, I'll just leave that there. I don't have a ton of thoughts on that. As far as growth, it was actually mostly equal, whether you were in the squat group or the or the hip thrust group, the growth in your glute max, the three regions of the glute max, were basically similar between the squat and the hip thrust. There was a very slight but insignificant lean towards better growth in the hip thrust group. The quads and the adductors grew more in the squats group, which makes sense, and neither exercise grew the glute med or the glute min, which I put duh next to that in our in our notes here, but I think that also makes sense. I mean, neither one has any sort of abduction where the leg is moving out and back or out to the side. And so in my mind, yeah, both of those exercises are sagittal plane movements that are gonna work the glute max primarily. One interesting piece from the paper that I think is worth discussing is that the way Brett Contreras and Menno are both part of the paper only in the design of the study. They weren't actually part of, you know, executing the study with Daniel Plotkin and team, but they did help design the study. And so in the design of the study, it has an escalating volume protocol. And I think this is relevant. I'll discuss why afterwards, but In week one, they performed three sets of each movement. In week two, they performed four sets of each movement. Weeks three through six, they did five sets of each movement. In weeks seven through nine, they did six sets of each movement. The repetition range was eight to 12 reps. And if they performed less than eight repetitions or more than 12, the load was adjusted accordingly. That is a quote from the paper. All sets were taken to volitional failure. interesting that both movements here were taken to failure, because one thing that we discuss a lot on this podcast here is that you don't need to necessarily go to failure to maximize results when you're training these heavy compound lengthened overloaded movements, and that there's probably significantly more benefit in training to failure on a short overload movement like a hip thrust. Another interesting piece of that discussion related to failure is the escalation of the volume protocol. And so not only are you starting training untrained people on three sets of squats to failure, but then you're gonna have them do more squats to failure in subsequent weeks until you get to nine weeks and then they're doing six sets of squats to failure. So. Could it be that there's just so much muscle damage from those squats that maybe you were unable to maximize hypertrophy and that there's significantly less muscle damage from the hip thrust and maybe you can Get a lot more from more sets and being closer to failure that way possibly any thoughts

[Aaron Straker]: 28:35

Yes, so the volume ramping is interesting, especially in tandem with sets taken to volitional failure of untrained people with a back squat calling failure.

[Bryan]: 28:52

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 28:53

And I mean, if you were just, for everyone listening, if you were just to put yourself in like, okay, I'm gonna take a hip thrust to failure. You know you're working hard, obviously, but there's no fear associated with as you near that failure whereas with the back squat, especially being someone who's untrained and you have, what is it, like 18 lifting sessions under your belt by the end of it, that's it? You're

[Bryan]: 29:20

Yes.

[Aaron Straker]: 29:21

calling failure like quite far from it. And in my personal opinion, which could be wrong, the hip thrusts The volitional failure was probably closer to a

[Bryan]: 29:36

Mm-hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 29:36

true failure because there's no fear associated there. The inherent

[Bryan]: 29:41

Mmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 29:42

perceived risk is significantly lower. Now that's my speculation, but I just know judging back to like every, and I believe these are probably college students. I know the second group was college students. I would imagine this first group is as well. I just don't think we're getting squats, six squats to failure.

[Bryan]: 30:00

Hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 30:01

I just, I'm not buying it per se, so I think that could play into the results as well.

[Bryan]: 30:08

Hmm. Interesting. That's an interesting take, because I think that if you argue that the squats weren't taken to failure, then I would actually argue that the study has more validity. Because I think that if you were to set the study up where the squats are going two to three, maybe even four, reps from failure for these untrained people, and the hip thrusts are going to failure, now I think we actually have a somewhat ecological valid study. that more emulates the way in which people would actually train. Where I think that if you're gonna go on the assumption that this the paper is correct and that these people are in fact squatting to failure and hip pressing to failure, this kind of plays into one of my critiques, which would be that the muscle damage was so significant in the squat that they weren't actually able to see the hypertrophic gains from the squat. And then I have two references for this, both papers by Dhammas, one in 2016 and one in 2017. So the first one is resistance training induced changes in integrated myofibrillar protein synthesis are related to hypertrophy only after attenuation of muscle damage. Meaning that you're not gonna actually see the growth until you've gotten through the phase of all of the excessive muscle damage. The other study was the development of skeletal muscle hypertrophy through resistance training, the role of damage and muscle protein synthesis. Same idea. And so that is one aspect of, hey, if you're training squats to failure as a newbie, you may have this problem. Shit, you may even have that problem not training the squats to failure. And so I don't necessarily think that just because they're Aaron believes they're not going to failure, that means that there's not muscle damage. I'm pretty damn sure that these people doing squats, even if it is two to four reps from failure and they're not going all the way there, they're probably still getting wrecked from those squats, especially with the increasing volume protocol. That seems to be something that would be more conducive to a short overload movement. You just don't see people ramping volume too often in practice on heavy demanding. lengthened compound movements. So that is one potentially ecological invalid piece of the study. Let's see, I had one other thing on this as well. Oh, the neural learning side. So again, when you look at the study design here, executing a hip thrust as a brand new person to training is not that hard. You can be instructed, on how to do it and you can do hip thrusts and learn how to, you can get better at them very quickly because the range of motion is small and you don't have to coordinate the action of a ton of different muscles. You take a new person who's never really been in the gym and you try to teach them to back squat, they're gonna look like a newborn giraffe for the first few weeks. So we're not even just talking about now recovering from muscle damage before you can get hypertrophy, but now we have the confounding variable of you have to get through the neural learning phase and actually kind of learn how to perform a back squat properly before you can actually then to begin to get some growth there as well. And so I really think there's kind of these two big mitigating features that in the study design look like it could lean you to believe that maybe this study was designed to show hip thrusts to be a somewhat superior movement. Any thought on that?

[Aaron Straker]: 34:02

No, I mean, not really. I loved your rebuttal to my original point. I think that was very, very valid. And I think it's the... Because I remember being 15 years old learning to squat with 20 other 15 year olds at the same time. We were all untrained. That's exactly what happens. That neural adaptation, it goes long. It's different, you know, trying to learn a squat as opposed to trying to learn a hip thrust. It's a much more complicated movement. And I do think that you reaching proficiency with a hip thrust will happen in your ability to generate force and stuff. You will reach that faster. So that the neural adaptation point that you brought up is huge.

[Bryan]: 34:55

Yeah, so I think when you look at kind of everything happening between what's going on in this study and the neural learning side of the squat, the muscle damage side of the squat, the escalation of volume that seems to be in there as pointing to an advantage for the hip thrust being a short overload movement. I don't know if it would be a huge stretch, given that they showed equal growth in the glutes. I don't know if it would be a huge stretch to say that the ceiling for the hip thrust is about equal to the floor for the squats as far as growth is concerned. Meaning that the best you can hope for in the hip thrust is about the worst you can hope for in the squat, right? I don't know, maybe that's going a little bit too far, but it's crazy that despite all of these limitations and the way that the study design was put together. that the squat still performed equally to the hip thrust.

[Aaron Straker]: 35:58

I think that is a kind of a hidden gem from it with a lot of these proposed limitations and that sort of thing that the best of the hip thrust is arguably, like you said, the basement of the squat because we can

[Bryan]: 36:16

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 36:16

make a lot of assumptions from just what we know about untrained people who have 15, 16 training sessions under their belt, what their squat looks like. I think that could be a very interesting extrapolation by yourself there,

[Bryan]: 36:32

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 36:32

Brian.

[Bryan]: 36:33

thank you. Well, I think that ultimately, when we look at the practical takeaway from the study, like my takeaway really is that these two movements are synergistic. Like I wouldn't say you should just squat or you should just hip thrust. I mean, if you wanna grow the booty, you should probably squat because it's a lengthened movement. and you should probably hip thrust because it's a short overload movement. And one interesting thing that I got from this study that I don't know might be worth experimenting with and just the idea of program design overall is what if you just took all of your like really demanding length and movements and you had static volume and you didn't increase volume week to week, but maybe you then look at short overload movements as this lower fatiguing thing that gets you a lot of stimulus without a whole ton of of recovery cost. And maybe you can escalate volume in those movements. And I'm looking at this as like, you know, maybe we're talking about like a bench press, and you're doing like two sets of bench press, and every week, it's two sets, every week, it's two sets. But then you have your like cable crossovers or your cable press rounds or whatever movement you're doing. And you're like, Hey, I can start at two sets. And by the end of the mess, so I could be at five or six sets. And I don't really foresee that having a significant fatigue cost. But there could be a whole ton of extra stimulus with that. So that would be my takeaway. And of course, if you wanna grow the booty, you should do things other than just sagittal plane movements, whether they're lengthened overloaded or short overloaded, you should probably have some lateral abduction and some like glute med type stuff in there as well. So that's my takeaway from all that.

[Aaron Straker]: 38:18

My takeaway from it, and just to kind of reiterate, obviously studies create a closed kind of environment to compare things. In the real world, I don't think there ever needs to be a situation where is it, am I going to only back squat or hip thrust? And if I'm being really honest, I wouldn't necessarily say if I was like, hey, I want to have a really, really big butt with the information that I already have. I don't think either of those two would be my primary, you know, movements,

[Bryan]: 38:51

Yeah, no,

[Aaron Straker]: 38:52

if I'm

[Bryan]: 38:52

that's

[Aaron Straker]: 38:52

being really

[Bryan]: 38:52

it. So I

[Aaron Straker]: 38:53

honest.

[Bryan]: 38:53

think that actually, yeah, totally.

[Aaron Straker]: 38:55

So

[Bryan]: 38:55

I agree completely, yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 38:57

yeah, and

[Bryan]: 38:58

I

[Aaron Straker]: 38:58

I

[Bryan]: 38:58

think

[Aaron Straker]: 38:58

think

[Bryan]: 38:58

like,

[Aaron Straker]: 38:58

that's like.

[Bryan]: 38:59

and this goes into the next study. One of the things we're gonna discuss in the next study is I wanna discuss some of the exercise selection in regards to the next study. So yeah, I think that this conversation kind of progresses into there as well. Anything else to add

[Aaron Straker]: 39:12

Perfect.

[Bryan]: 39:12

here? Okay,

[Aaron Straker]: 39:13

Nope, let's

[Bryan]: 39:13

cool.

[Aaron Straker]: 39:13

move on.

[Bryan]: 39:14

All right, so reminder that the next study is Cassiano and colleagues, 2023 edition of the barbell hip thrust is effective for enhancing gluteus maximus hypertrophy in young women. So the study asked the question, what grows more glutes? RDLs and leg presses or RDLs, leg presses and hip thrusts? What do you think, Straker, what grew more?

[Aaron Straker]: 39:44

I'm probably going to go with the protocol that had more volume.

[Bryan]: 39:49

Mm, there you go. So this is one of the things that's important about the study. Aaron read ahead, he knows.

[Aaron Straker]: 39:54

Yeah

[Bryan]: 39:54

So, 33 untrained women were split into two groups and performed either RDLs and leg presses or RDLs, leg presses, and hip thrusts. Women performed resistance training three times per week for 10 weeks. Women did two sets of each exercise at 10 to 15 reps to failure with a two minute rest interval between sets. and a three-minute rest interval between exercises. At the end of the 10 weeks, glute max gains were, well, the group doing RDLs and leg press gained 6% on their glutes. The group doing RDLs, leg press, and hip thrusts gained 9% on their glutes. So it kinda looks like we're gaining about 3% per exercise. So RDLs give you 3%, leg press gives you 3%, hip thrust give you 3%. As Aaron alluded to, this study was not volume-equated, meaning that the RDL and the leg press group did 12 total weekly sets, whereas the RDL, leg press, and hip thrust group did 18 weekly sets. And Aaron is right, yeah, the group that added the hip thrusts in did more volume and got more gains. My question is, well actually I have a few questions. The first one is what would have happened if we would have just increased volume of RDL and leg press to equal the volume of the hip thrust group? So maybe instead of 12 total weekly sets of RDL and leg press you did 18 total sets, nine sets each, right? Who knows? but that would have been an interesting group to have as well. And then my other question is. did they choose the wrong exercises to try to glow the glutes? Because at the end of our other study discussion, we kind of alluded to this, but in my opinion, the RDL and leg press can be good glute exercises. I think it really depends how you execute that movement, and I don't know if untrained women are gonna execute them in the most glute dominant manner. But even if they were executing them as glute dominant movements, I'm not sure that those are like the best glute movements out there. I would have loved to have seen either one of those exercises replaced with a split squat or a lunge, or even better would have been to see RDL leg press and lunge versus RDL leg press and hip thrust. Yeah, any thoughts on any of that?

[Aaron Straker]: 42:34

I mean, no, you took the words pretty much right out of my mouth. One of the things I thought was funny reading this one though was like, okay, nine, you know, regardless, I was like, yeah, 9% more butt in 10 weeks is like pretty fucking sweet. You know what I mean?

[Bryan]: 42:50

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 42:50

Like imagine that to anything like quads, like you get, hey, you get 9% more quads, or yeah, 9% in 10 weeks, like

[Bryan]: 42:58

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 42:58

that's pretty damn good. So that's what I just like kind of joked as I was reading through it. But yeah, this one, it's, the thing that kind of frustrates me with some of these is there's gonna be people out there that read the abstract and they're making reels about it and stuff like that. And you're like, see, the hip thrust, it's like better, but it's like, the study design is not, you know, it's not good. And I'm curious if they pass this through people and they're like, yeah, study design looks great, like run with it. Not only is the volume not equated, the one with the hip thrust, it has 33% more volume.

[Bryan]: 43:42

Actually

[Aaron Straker]: 43:42

It's

[Bryan]: 43:42

50%

[Aaron Straker]: 43:42

significant.

[Bryan]: 43:42

more.

[Aaron Straker]: 43:44

Is it, oh, okay, thank you, my math is

[Bryan]: 43:46

Hehehehe

[Aaron Straker]: 43:47

awful. So, I mean, it's 50% more volume. So, I don't know. I do not

[Bryan]: 43:54

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 43:55

know, really.

[Bryan]: 43:55

yeah, I wonder that question too, when these studies come out and they're like, does this go through like an Eric Helms review? And it's like, yep, Eric gave it the thumbs up and was like, this looks great. Cause I got some problems with that. So yeah, I don't, the thing that it's not volume-equated, it definitely creates a problem. I just don't know what question they're trying to answer here. Like the question is like, hey, is it better to add hip thrusts than not add hip thrusts?

[Aaron Straker]: 44:27

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 44:27

Yeah, like that's probably better. Yeah, I don't exactly know what was trying to be answered here, but it did show that adding hip thrusts was helpful if you're going to use them as a way of adding more volume. I think in some ways we have a... the failure thing comes up again. And like, I don't know that the failure thing reared its ugly head in the same way in this one and had potentially the same impact that it may have had on the squat one because you were literally comparing a lengthen movement to a short movement in the first study. And

[Aaron Straker]: 45:00

Mm-hmm.

[Bryan]: 45:01

here you have two lengthen movements on one group and two lengthen movements and a short movement on the other group and they didn't escalate volume, which thank God for that.

[Aaron Straker]: 45:10

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 45:11

But yeah, I don't. know that they were going to failure. Again, I don't know that it matters because their length and movements and they're untrained anyway. So I'm not sure that really, really has a huge impact on it anyways, but it is interesting that you take people that have never trained before and you ask them to go to failure on an RDL. It just,

[Aaron Straker]: 45:34

three

[Bryan]: 45:34

something

[Aaron Straker]: 45:34

times

[Bryan]: 45:34

just doesn't

[Aaron Straker]: 45:35

per

[Bryan]: 45:35

seem

[Aaron Straker]: 45:35

week,

[Bryan]: 45:35

to, yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 45:36

separated

[Bryan]: 45:36

exactly.

[Aaron Straker]: 45:37

by two minutes.

[Bryan]: 45:38

Right, right, exactly, exactly. So

[Aaron Straker]: 45:43

It's

[Bryan]: 45:43

yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 45:43

that, yeah.

[Bryan]: 45:43

I'd love to see a video of what failure looks like here.

[Aaron Straker]: 45:47

Yeah, I mean, I would imagine it's volitional failure, but I mean, here's the thing. If you're someone, and this one I do know, this is on college students, because it said it like really, really early in it. Let's say week one of the program, and you're like, hey, you're gonna come in here, you're gonna do RDLs and leg press to failure, which didn't save 10 to 15 reps too.

[Bryan]: 46:09

Yeah, yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 46:09

So you're getting a pretty decent metabolic, you know, response out of that. You get two minutes. and then you gotta go to failure again on an RDL, right?

[Bryan]: 46:19

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 46:19

And then you get three minutes, and then it's we're going to failure on the leg press, 10 to 15 reps, two minutes to failure again. Even if they do give like a really good honest effort, you know, week one, that's three sessions of that? Like you're, one, you're gonna be a world of fucking pain.

[Bryan]: 46:38

Well, yeah, how are

[Aaron Straker]: 46:39

Really.

[Bryan]: 46:39

you gonna do it two days later? Like if you're actually a new untrained person that's taking two lengthened movements close to failure or not even close to failure, just doing them after not doing them, after being on the couch and then going and doing RDLs and leg presses close to failure, yeah, I couldn't come back two days later and imagine any new

[Aaron Straker]: 46:57

Yeah.

[Bryan]: 46:57

person actually being able to do that.

[Aaron Straker]: 47:00

And yeah, I mean, I have my concerns about this one, for sure, especially because they're untrained. They're in college and they're untrained. Potentially they're not athletes, right? They're like regular college students. And what that generally probably means is we have like alcohol and those sorts of things on the weekend. And I just, I don't know. I feel like it seems a little fishy to me, but. Just

[Bryan]: 47:28

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 47:28

the overall design, the outcomes, I wouldn't necessarily argue because it's pretty straightforward. You add more volume, you add a third exercise, you're generally going to get more.

[Bryan]: 47:40

Yeah, and I mean, I understand why they're using untrained people in these studies because you wanna see the most magnitude of change. And so I get it. It's just, when you look at this study like this, from the perspective of somebody with 20 years of training experience, more or less, the ecological validity just, it plummets and. So I don't even know that I look at this and use it as something that I'm like, hey, when I have clients, if they're somewhat new to training, this will be the protocol I use. It's not even like you can't take that from it either. So yeah, I don't really know exactly what we take from this study aside from I would have loved to have seen a group that was doing RDL leg press and a split squat lunge type movement because I'm pretty confident, at least in theory that. that should have produced more growth than RDL, leg press, and hip thrust. But I mean, that would have been a really cool study to see, so at least then, you know, feel like we can take something away from that.

[Aaron Straker]: 48:44

Yeah, exactly.

[Bryan]: 48:47

Cool. Well, that actually, we got through those a lot quicker than I would have anticipated. Do you have any other kind of discussion around any of this stuff?

[Aaron Straker]: 48:55

I mean, we could wrap up with some practical things for people out there who, let's say you do want to add 9% to your butt, and if you, let's say this, right? We'll run through a couple practical examples to help listeners out who want 9% on their butt in 10 weeks. I don't think you're gonna be able to do that, so just as a joke. Let's say someone's training once per week, right? They have one session per week they can dedicate to, you know, a primary glute focused day. How are we gonna recommend them the structure of that?

[Bryan]: 49:31

That's a good question. Yeah, I feel like in practice, we would probably have two days where one of the days might be like a really big glute-focused day, but then the other day would be probably like a quad hamstring type day where you're gonna get some glute stimulus there too. So I don't think we need to just look at it from like, hey, we have one day a week to train the glutes. But I do think like on the day that is... dedicated for the glutes, you should definitely put in a single leg movement that stretches the glutes. Because these single leg movements are also going to incorporate from stability from the pelvis. And so we're gonna get a little bit more glute development, not just through the glute max, but also through some of the stabilizing, like the glute med and maybe even a little bit of glute min, which you don't get in these kind of like sagittal plane bilateral movements. So I think that you definitely have like some single leg work in there and And I don't see a reason why you can't also have like RDL leg press hip thrust type movements in there Like those are all great movements I think you probably want to execute them in a way that would be conducive to the glutes So you would do a little bit of more of a knee bend in your RDL and you would put for your leg press You would put your feet up high and the bottom position would be mostly shins perpendicular to the platform. So you're not getting a ton of knee flexion in there trying to limit the quad involvement a little bit. And then I think on your other day that's more hamstring and quad based, you probably have less glutes because you're probably doing like a leg extension, a leg curl, and you may also have RDLs and leg presses in there too, but you may perform them differently. So that's not to say you're gonna get no butt. In fact, you're probably gonna get a ton of butt in there too. They're just gonna be a little bit more biased to the hamstring or to the quad. So that's kind of how I would think about it. How about you?

[Aaron Straker]: 51:34

No, I mean, that's exactly how I would approach it. I think potentially on the glute day, maybe at, like honestly, personal favorite for glute, front foot elevated, reverse lunge. Absolute favorite,

[Bryan]: 51:47

Mm-hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 51:47

right? You

[Bryan]: 51:48

That

[Aaron Straker]: 51:48

get

[Bryan]: 51:48

one

[Aaron Straker]: 51:48

that

[Bryan]: 51:48

smashes

[Aaron Straker]: 51:48

deep

[Bryan]: 51:49

them,

[Aaron Straker]: 51:49

stretch.

[Bryan]: 51:49

yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 51:50

Oh yeah, every time I do it, my glutes are like absolutely wrecked. So that would definitely be a go-to there. And then I have... I don't know, I probably, if I had like the leg press in on the quad day, the quad and hamstring day, I probably wouldn't put it in on the

[Bryan]: 52:10

Yes.

[Aaron Straker]: 52:11

more glute-focused day. But like that front foot elevated, you know, reverse lunge would be similar. That's gonna get you more of that length and position. We probably do. Maybe a bent knee RDL with a barbell or potentially a dumbbell or something like that. And then... A hip thrust would be a great one. And then potentially maybe like a hip extension or something like that that's going to be training

[Bryan]: 52:31

Yeah, oh yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 52:32

it

[Bryan]: 52:32

I have x-

[Aaron Straker]: 52:32

in that shortened position. Definitely something in the short position there because on your quad and hamstring day, it is much less likely that you would include a glute shortened

[Bryan]: 52:43

Hmm.

[Aaron Straker]: 52:43

movement there.

[Bryan]: 52:45

Yeah, that's actually a really good point because I feel like now that you mentioned that, I might actually put the hip extension, the 45 degree hip extension on the hamstring day and just be happy that I get some butt in there too. like along for the ride, you know, whereas you wouldn't really put a hip thrust on a hamstring and quad dominant day because there isn't really much quad or hamstring. So that would fit more on like the glute dominant day, but a 45 hip extension also trains the hamstrings quite well. So that could be placed there. It's a good point. And then regarding the single leg work, it's funny, you mentioned that a front foot elevated, it's a reverse lunge, right? So you're kind of stepping forward and backward each time. Yeah, so I really like that movement too, but what I find is that as I fatigue, it's almost like the top half of the movement that's almost harder than the bottom half in that specific setup, because you're at an elevation, so you're trying to stand up. And so there's like a bit more resistance at the shorter position, if you wanna call it that. Whereas for whatever reason, like that one doesn't make me as sore and not. to say that soreness is the end-all be-all or that we need to base our training around whether you're getting sore, but when you look at it acutely, that front foot reverse lunge that lights my ass up doesn't make me that sore when compared to a rear foot elevated split squat where that leg is deloaded on the back and then the front leg is taking a bit more of that, and then that would obviously be executed in a hip flexion dominant style. where the front shin is mostly vertical and your chest is forward a little bit. So something like that would probably be my choice of single leg movement. And then another thing you mentioned with the bent knee RDL made me think of a B-stance RDL with a little bit of hip rotation. So you see Cass perform this one a lot where it's like it is a B-stance and then you're kind of rotating your body across as you, Bryson, thank you, appreciate it. Can you take that upstairs, please? Thank you. I found it in your couch. Okay. You found a battery. Because he had to let me know. So yeah, you're gonna get a little bit more full

[Aaron Straker]: 55:16

Yeah, I think I don't have any more on the back end. I think it was a great way to kind of tie it up and be like, okay, really good example. If you want to add 9% to your glutes in 10 weeks, we would probably structure it as such. And I guess one thing for you that, or go ahead and then I have like one kind of minor detail that we can wrap up with.

[Bryan]: 55:36

Go with your detail first.

[Aaron Straker]: 55:39

So with, I think both of these studies actually, if I'm not mistaken, they were training them three times per week. How do you

[Bryan]: 55:46

The first study

[Aaron Straker]: 55:47

feel?

[Bryan]: 55:47

was not. The first study was twice

[Aaron Straker]: 55:49

Was

[Bryan]: 55:49

a week.

[Aaron Straker]: 55:49

it? Okay,

[Bryan]: 55:50

Yeah.

[Aaron Straker]: 55:50

okay, great, thank you, thank you for clarifying there. The second one was three times per week. I'm always like on the fence around that because I feel like even if someone who has like a really good recovery capacity. Aside something like maybe biceps, lateral delts, like calves, trying to train like your glutes three times per week, it's really... There's trade-offs on either proximity to failure, volume on something on one of the days just to like tuck in that third day. I can't say that I've personally or professionally had great success with trying to target like a larger muscle group like that three times per week.

[Bryan]: 56:36

Yeah, I haven't either, but I know that Brett Contreras actually designed some of his glute lab programs around like five times a week glute training,

[Aaron Straker]: 56:46

Mm-hmm.

[Bryan]: 56:47

like three to five. And so I think that like it can work if you're doing a ton of banded and short overload movement, which he does. So I think on his programs that have you doing five days a week of glutes, Like two of the days only are you doing length and stuff, like you'd be doing an RDL, a squat, a lunge, step up type thing. And then the other three days are like banded abductions, the ABduction machine, different variations of hip thrusts and bridges and stuff like that. And so I think if you're having like a program in which you're only hitting length and movements twice a week, which is probably the realistic maximum for what's recoverable. and then you fill in the gaps with a ton of short overload stuff. Yeah, like he gets his programs up to like 40 sets of glutes a week or something. But I'm pretty sure that's like 30 sets of short overload bandit stuff and like 10 sets of lengthened in. I don't know that that's true, but that would be my assumption.

[Aaron Straker]: 57:47

Yeah, I think it's a good practical note for the listeners.

[Bryan]: 57:50

Yeah. And then the other thing I was just gonna say was in the episode that we did, it was episode 100, which was nihilistic, evidence-based nihilism, where we went over a number of studies and stuff like that. One of the points that I discussed on the heels of one of the studies was... the idea that like, why do people get such great gains when they do studies? Like, why are we always seeing, you know, 9% increases? Like, you pointed out that three times, like, wow, I could get 9% gains in my glutes in 10 weeks. That's crazy. In the one study that I was talking about on the Nihilism episode, it was the one where I had the individual data. Scarpelli and colleagues from 2020, I believe. I had the individual data where they performed leg press and leg extensions on one leg in one way and they performed them on the other leg in a different way and some people in that individual data were getting 14% growth in I don't remember how long the study was and so we had some discussion around that at the end and one of the things we talked about was that there's a number of factors that go into you participating in a study. And so I know these are untrained people, but just overall, let's assume we're dealing with trained people. When you come into a study, you're A, you're prioritizing a muscle group, you're literally going in being like, hey, my goal during these next 15 weeks or whatever is quads. Like that is the thing I'm mentally engaged with. Then, you're gonna train quads first because you're going into the lab, it's not like you're gonna go do back and biceps and then do your quads. So you're doing quads first, you're mentally engaged in doing quads, you're probably skewing more of your volume to doing quads because in that study you had one leg doing 22 sets and another leg doing slightly more than what they were doing. And so there's a number of these kind of factors that are all coming together to make quads like the hot babe at the dance or whatever. And so you're like super hyper focused on that. And so if we're looking at that from like a long term programming perspective of just training, it's like, hey, maybe you make a muscle group, your one and only for X amount of time. and maybe you get more growth that way. And I don't know if that's true, but that would kind of be the extrapolation that I would take from that is, or justification for why are we seeing these like massive growths during these studies, is just because people probably are going into the gym and they're training three times a week full body, or they're like, you know, maybe they're training their quads half hazardly or not as the main focus. And then you go into this study where that's literally the thing that you're trying to do and it changes the game a little bit.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:00:53

Yeah, I think that's a really good wrap up point there. Well, it's like what gets the focus gets the growth, but then we also don't know what sacrifices are made for the other body parts, if any, if they're even getting trained sorts of things. So that

[Bryan]: 1:01:05

Yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 1:01:05

was a good

[Bryan]: 1:01:06

yeah,

[Aaron Straker]: 1:01:06

point.

[Bryan]: 1:01:06

no, totally. Yeah, exactly. Because if you're not training the other body parts, then think about all that additional recovery capacity that opens up to.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:01:14

Yep, yep.

[Bryan]: 1:01:16

All right.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:01:17

Anything else on the back of this one, Brian?

[Bryan]: 1:01:19

Nah, I think that's it, man.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:01:21

Alright guys, as always, thank you for listening. We'll be back next week with a fresh episode.

[Bryan]: 1:01:35

Still recording.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:01:36

It says stopping, it says stopping, but it has not stopped yet.

[Bryan]: 1:01:43

All right. Sweet, well that was fun. I actually enjoy this style of episode. It takes, hopefully you can cut all this out, but it takes a lot more preparation planning and thought that goes into it.

[Aaron Straker]: 1:01:59

Mm-hmm.

[Bryan]: 1:02:00

Like I spent most of my afternoon.