Building Strength, Muscle Size & Endurance with Dr. Andy Galpin

Today I am speaking with Dr. Andy Galpin, Professor of Kinesiology at California State University, Fullerton. Dr. Galpin is one of the foremost experts in the world on the science and application of methods to increase strength, hypertrophy and endurance performance. We discuss fundamental principles of strength and hypertrophy training and building endurance plus protocols for each.

Learn more about Dr. Galpin Here: http://www.andygalpin.com

TRANSCRIPT

KAYLA BARNES (00:00)

Dr. Galpin, it's such a pleasure to have you here. As I mentioned to you before I started recording, we're going to be talking about one of my favorite subjects, which is strength training, endurance, hypertrophy, the whole nine yards. My followers always see when and I'm at the gym, I always put brain booster on there. I try to context training and exercise as a booster for your brain. But thank you so much for being here.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (00:23)

Yes, my pleasure. I'm excited.

KAYLA BARNES (00:25)

Absolutely. So I want to kind of lay the foundation. How did you get so interested in exercise and the kind of field of study that you're in now?

DR. ANDY GALPIN (00:35)

Yeah. It's similar to most of the folks that are scientists and exercise scientists, the fact that I was a pretty good athlete, but not too good. So when you're too good of an athlete, things don't matter like training, nutrition, and sleep. You're always winning, you're always the best. So there's not a lot of incentives to learn there. When you're not good enough, it's just too far away. It's too unattainable. So I was in that middle ground right where training mattered. And when I did things better, it showed on the field or on the court or on the diamond. And when I think things worse, it did the same. So probably at age twelve or 13, I started strength training just to get better at sports and football. I had an older brother who was bigger, and the vast majority of my friends that I hung out with were from his class. So I was always competing against people who are bigger and stronger. And the culture where I come from, losing is always acceptable, and that's fine. But not working was just absurd. Like, why would you not do everything possible within your power? And then if you lose, that's okay.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (01:40)

I didn't know anything different. That's just my parents, my siblings, everyone was around. And so training harder to get better was just a natural thing. So I had a successful high school career, played College sports as well, and then just thought, I don't know what I want to do with my life, but if I can somehow find a career in sports that are not sport coaching. So I didn't want to be a basketball coach or baseball coach. This is the part that I thought was unique. So that's what really started me. And then I found a way to make a career of the entire thing.

KAYLA BARNES (02:11)

I love that. And I love too that many of us can go to the gym, and that's definitely really good for overall health. Right? Doing something is better than doing nothing. But what I really love that you do is you break it down to such a scientific level. So when we talk about working out or we'll say training, would you break it down into like three or four sections? So we have strength training, hypertrophy, endurance. Would you add anything else to that.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (02:37)

It just depends on honestly how semantic or does it really want to be here you could generally call it maybe even a few more categories. So the first one would be what we call skill. So this is just moving better. So this is your exercise technique. This is your running technique. This is your ability to do a yoga pose and get the right arm in the right position or do an animal flow and know where your knee is supposed to be when you're in this position. So it's making your body move in the way you want it to and not the way you don't. So we just globally call that skill. And if you have that ability, then you can express that however you'd like. Again, you can run properly, you could shoot basketballs more effectively or you can hit your yoga pose better. It's just having control of your body. So we'll call that skill or movement control. Whatever you want to do, then it's your ability to express that movement either forcefully or fast. And speed of course is the fast version. Force is typically thought of as strength. If you combine and you multiply force times speed, you get power.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (03:45)

So you could technically differentiate speed and power or even power from strength. Or you could really honestly kind of call them all the same thing. Again, it just depends on how deep you really want to go. In fact, even within something like speed, you can break up into multiple things like acceleration versus top end velocity. So we can get really detailed past that. Then you have things like muscle hypertrophy, which is muscle size. And then you start getting into endurance. Endurance has a bunch of different levels, probably even five or six with NH. But you can generally call it into a couple of categories. So your ability to sustain work output under extremely high fatigue. So this is everything from how many push ups you can do in a minute to intervals to sort of shorter duration CrossFit to circuit things like that. Then you have the ability to sustain work over a longer stretch of time. So this is more of your classic steady state endurance and cardio and swimming. So that's like the most broad categories you could break it up into.

KAYLA BARNES (04:46)

Okay, we'll definitely dive into some of these are so interesting to me, like sustaining work for a longer period of time. But we'll start with my two favorites. So what would you say are the foundational pieces of strength training? In terms of what aspect in terms of getting stronger. So if I wanted to go into the gym and my primary goal was to get stronger, what are the ways in which we can do that?

DR. ANDY GALPIN (05:13)

I see. So application, how do we get stronger? Got it. Well, think of an overarching principle here called the said principle. This means specific adaptation to impose demand. This is what determines everything about exercise and getting the results you want. All you have to understand is this basic principle, and all it really means is the words. So the adaptation you want is specific to the demand that you impose. So if you want to get an adaptation of getting stronger, you have to place a demand on your body or impose a demand on your body that makes it produce more force. If you want to gain better endurance, you have to impose a demand that causes you to overcome fatigue over time. That's as simple as it can be. So if you want to get stronger, lift heavy things. If you want to be able to run longer, practice running longer till you can't anymore. It is that simple. It really is. Now it can get a lot trickier over time because we want to be able to do that for a long amount of time without resulting in injury. So if you think about it this way, specificity is King.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (06:25)

So you want to get stronger. Technically, the best, the most effective thing you can do is go pick up and implement the heaviest possible thing you can or right below, like 99% of your absolute maximum. And practice that as many times as you can, as often as you can. However, what we know from physiology is too much stress applied too frequently, results in injuries and overuse. So all we're doing with program design and exercise is playing a game of how much specificity can I drive versus how much variation do I need? And then how do I make sure I don't do that too often? So when you ask, what do I need to do to get stronger? My answer is going to be just lift heavy things, the real question becomes, how do I do that? So that it's sustainable, so that I continue to make progress over time and I have to take two steps back every time I take one step forward. That's a more difficult question to answer. But fundamentally, you want to do strength training as frequently as you can. That is calibrated to your abilities, your background, your recovery, your age, your sleep quality, et cetera, et cetera.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (07:35)

But that's really what we want to do. So we want to train the body to move in a high force environment, probably in what we call multiple exercise planes. So what I mean is, practice pushing things away from you, like a bench press. Practice pulling things towards you, like a lap pull down or a bent row. Practice pushing things away from your legs, like a leg press or a squat, and then practice pulling things towards you, like a deadlift or a hinge or an audio, something like that. So we want to express that force and a handful of different movement patterns so that you kind of get this well balanced ability for all of your muscles to create force, not just the same two or three. Now, if you want to talk, like, actual details about how to compensate, we can certainly do that. But that's the concept. And that's why hundreds of different types of program design and what I mean by program designer, how many reps do I do? What exercise is better, how many days a week? These are what we call program design variables. Well, there's tons of different manipulations of these.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (08:34)

There's all kinds of strength training programs that are all scientifically equally effective. And it's because they're all really just trying to do the same thing physiologically. They're trying to impose a specific demand. And the variations between these program styles is simply helping you cannot have that excessive frequency, excessive volume. So that's really all we're coming down to. So you can't say, like, which one is better or what specifically do we actually know scientifically? There is no it doesn't matter because most of them were equally effective. It just comes down to no context, personal preference, access to different types of equipment, your background, your other variables.

KAYLA BARNES (09:16)

Absolutely. And I have a question, and it might be a little bit silly, but how do you know what 75% of your maximum volume or your maximum potential would be? How do you kind of determine that?

DR. ANDY GALPIN (09:30)

So technically you have to test in order to know 75%, you have to test and see where 100% is. That's the most direct answer. We call that your one repetition maximum. So it's a maximum amount of bench that you can do the heaviest you can do one time, see if that's £100, 75% would be £75. You can also do it some easier ways. If you're just like, I'm not going to go there and just continue to add weight into a barbell and see what I can't lift anymore. That's the actual best way you can do estimates. So number one, you can do things. There are calculators and equations that you can look up. They're very easy to find that says, okay, if I did this weight, say £75 for this many reps, say five reps, and you can look at this chart and it'll say your one rep Max maximum is likely £90 or something like that. And so you don't actually have to go all the way up there. You can just pick a weight that you feel is pretty heavy, do as many reps as you can of that, and then look at that conversion chart and it'll tell you what your own represents.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (10:29)

And it's decently, accurate. It's not perfect, but it's pretty close. Another way that's even simpler than that. You can just go on perceived effort so you can lift it and say, okay, God, I probably could have done two or three more. I probably done five or six. I think that's about a seven out of ten. Now, that's not a very good method, especially for beginners. They tend to really poorly understand what 85% or 95 or the difference between 75 and 90. It probably feels the same, but if you absolutely have to, that's not a terrible way to go about it.

KAYLA BARNES (11:04)

That's super helpful. I've been working out for so long, but I still really don't necessarily know. I've never done a one rep Max, which today is later at the gym. I'm going to do it based on this conversation.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (11:16)

Lovely.

KAYLA BARNES (11:17)

Yeah. And see what I can really do. And I'm really excited for that. So that's great information. So if you had to say a couple of protocols though, for strength training, maybe for someone that either was brand new or someone that's been conditioning their body, would you break the split into any specific way or are there some general guidelines that you would recommend?

DR. ANDY GALPIN (11:39)

Yeah, sure. In general, you have this little group of things we call Kofa verb, which is just like terrible sports science acronym, because we are not good in sports science at marketing and branding and things like that. What the hell is Kofa Verb? These are collection of variables that you can modify and by doing so, you'll get a different exercise adaptation. And so this is all the stuff that you can change around and that determines whether you got stronger, whether you got better endurance, whether you got hypertrophy, whatever. And we don't necessarily run through all of them, but I will explain each one quickly. So Cofounder stands for C, which is choice. This means the exercise you Select Select bench press or dumbbell bench or bench on the machine or whatever. So the exercise you determine in general your strength training, you want to pick mostly we call multi joint exercises. So a bench press is using both your shoulder and your elbow. So multiple joints at once. A standing bicep curl is only using your elbow joint. So you're probably not going to do like a one rep or two rep Max with the bicep curl.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (12:47)

It doesn't really make sense for smaller single joint movements like a tricep push down. Same thing. It's just using the elbow joint. If you want to fill out the strength of your arms, you're probably going to select a multi joint exercise again, like the benchpress, legs are the same thing. Seated machine leg extension. That's just your knee joint. You probably want to look towards a bigger movement with your knee and your hip, like a leg press or squat, if you know how to do those well. Or again, a deadlift or trap bar, deadlift or split squat or lunge or something like that. So the exercise choice is the first one. The O is the order. So which order do I do it in? Do I do the leg press first and then the leg extension or the bicep curl? And then my cardio, which order within my workout, do I do them? And in general, you want to do the multi joints, the more complicated ones first. So when you're more fatigued you're not trying to remember all those coaching cues that go into doing a perfect squat with your shoulder and your back and your hips and your feet, your knee.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (13:55)

As you're more fatigued, you can just be sitting on a machine and doing your single joint leg extension or doing your bicep curl. They're less dangerous, less things involved. So the order is the second variable code for F is frequency. How many days per week to do it right. Then you have I, which is the intensity, which is the percentage of your one rep Max, then V for the volume. So this is the repetitions you execute in a row. So 12345 take a break multiplied by how many steps. So I did that 12345 took a break, did 12345 took a break, did 12345 took a break. That'd be three sets of 515 total reps, right? So that's the VP, which stands for progression. So how do I change that throughout time? It's not really something we need to worry about in this conversation. It's more complicated program design. The last one is R, which is the rest interval. So how much rest do I take in between those sets? So I did those five repetitions. I took a break and did five more. Well, how long was that break? So now that we understand that these are these modifier variables when it comes to strength, one thing I'll say frequently, and this has been around for a very long time.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (15:14)

In fact, there was a fantastic study, a series of studies that came out in the 1940s by a physician and scientist named Delorey Thomas Deloreme. And he is the first one that outlined this idea of progressive overload. And he basically compared a protocol that was more like three to five repetitions at a time compared to something that was a higher repetition range, like ten to twelve and 15 repetitions per se. And he was the first one to sign, at least in English. There have been studies in other languages, Russian and German, but he was the first one in American or English, rather, to outline the scientifically. But people even before that knew. So it's been around a long time. So I just collectively call this the three to five concept, which means I want you to select three to five exercises. So if you're feeling better, closer to five. If you're feeling worse or you're short on time, closer to three. So three to five exercises, do it. Three to five repetitions in a row. Again, same thing. Feeling better, do more and worse. You want to go as heavy as you can within that rep range.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (16:23)

So if you're doing sets of five, do as heavy as you can do for five reps. By the end of that fifth rep, you should be like, oh, I might have had like one or two more, but that was really heavy. It has to be that heavier. You're not going to get there. So three to five exercises, three to five reps. You probably want to do three to five sets. You want to rest three to five minutes in between each exercise, and you want to do that three to five times a week. So now I just gave you a protocol that can be as short as this. Three exercises, three repetitions for three sets with three minutes rest in between. That's a nine minute workout. You do three of those. That's a 2020 something minute total workout, three days a week. It can be a small or it can be five sets of five with five minutes rest for five exercises. That's a two hour workout, five days a week. So it can cover the entire gamut of how much time you have, how much interest you have, your ability, all of that stuff. If you do it at a high enough intensity, which again, intensity means load in this case, like how heavy then that's going to cover the gamut of being a really effective protocol for the vast majority of people, for strength development or power, for that matter.

KAYLA BARNES (17:43)

I think that's a really, really helpful baseline. So thank you for that. And then what about days between? If you're doing your split, you might be doing arms and shoulders one day. How many days do you recommend before hitting that saved body part again?

DR. ANDY GALPIN (17:57)

So you actually outlined a very interesting part. You kind of skipped over something. In general, when you're training for strength, splitting the workouts by body parts is not necessarily the best approach. You can do it, it's fine, but that tends to be more of a hypertrophy or physique approach. So the problem with splitting your workouts by body part is this like how many days a week on a normal week do you get the strength training?

KAYLA BARNES (18:27)

So on a normal week, I train about five days a week, and then I fantastic active rest days. So I walk and I walk on days that I do strength training as well.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (18:36)

Great. So let's say on a normal week you got five, but probably 20% of those weeks something comes up and I travel too busy, and all of a sudden that number got knocked for four days. And there's probably some amount of these weeks where they got knocked to three days. Well, if you're only doing your arms, say, one day a week, and then you go back to do your arms again the second day and you missed that workout, you're not actually coming back to arms again for another seven to ten days. You probably want to train each muscle group at least twice a week. And so for most people, it's probably generally more effective to do whole body workouts most of the time. If you're training for a perturbed, then you can get away with training a body part once a week. If that one workout is really exhausting for that muscle group, you can get away with that level of frequency for strength if you're a big beginner, but it's probably not enough. Like the frequency just suffers. You need to train that lose muscle groups more often, probably minimum twice per week. Three would probably be even better for general strength development, especially in early phases.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (19:49)

So for most people, I would generally recommend not doing body part splits, doing whole body workouts and whole body exercises. So pick an exercise that can train multiple muscle groups at once just to save you time so you can get your back done. You can get your hamstrings and your quads and your glutes and maybe your shoulders done in a single exercise. These are things like kettlebell types of workouts. If you're able to do cleans and presses or anything more complicated like that, it's really time efficient. So it's like it's one of the things that that space of exercise got correct. It's just really effective for time sake. If you're like, oh, I don't know how to do a lot of those exercises. I'm not comfortable with that. That's fine. You can still design a full body workout. So again, you could do the leg press machine while your legs are resting. Go to the bent row machine while your back is resting and your legs are resting. Now you can go and do some split squats. Okay. And then you can while those are rest and you can come back and do some overhead pressing.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (20:55)

And you can just kind of run through those four exercises, four sets each or something like that. And that would still again be a 20 or 30 minutes workout, because while your leg is resting and that clock is ticking, you're doing upper body work. And we call this super setting. And that's what can make these like, because if you start running numbers, I want to set you like five. That's a five for five minutes or just like, no way. Right? Well, yeah. I mean, literally if you're sitting there on your phone for five minutes in between ever. But most people are going to superstar. For the average person, that's a really effective way to go around it. So that's what I would recommend. You can finish each workout with a little bit more of an emphasis on one body part. So if you're like, hey, I really want to get my glutes bigger. Okay, great. Do your total body thing and then pick two glute exercises at the very end and just glued to death. Right? Just glued two glutes so you can't walk out of the gym, you can't sit in the toilet. That's great.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (21:49)

Fine. Then the next day, maybe you kind of do a similar thing, but then you burn out your triceps at the end. Okay, great. And you can kind of do a little bit mix of this full body work. So the legs got something, the back got something, the shoulders got something. But then you really focused on your biceps today, and then you really focus on your calves the next day at the end. So it's a really nice blend to make sure that nothing gets too far along without it getting trained again.

KAYLA BARNES (22:15)

Yeah, that's a great way to think about it as well. So before we move on to kind of talking about hypertrophy, is there anything else, like any other top tips for strength training you think that everyone should know?

DR. ANDY GALPIN (22:27)

Well, I was simply saying you can look a lot heavier than you think. Generally, people think strength training, and when we start talking about heavier side, they get really nervous and apprehensive, and it's like I'm going to get hurt. Well, if you don't know how to do a snatch, don't do the heaviest snatch you can do. But certainly if you're talking about dumbbells and machines, the risk is actually really low. It's unlikely to get hurt with the exception of the spine. So if you're on a bench or a machine, the spine is generally taken care of. So you're just fine. So I would tell people, don't be afraid of trying to go for a one rep Max. Don't be afraid of trying to get even closer to three rep Max or five Remax. Go heavier than you think. You'll be fine.

KAYLA BARNES (23:11)

I totally agree with you. I actually did. And before we talk about hypertrophy, I would love to talk about Glutes for a second. I mean, I'm a woman. This is like I'm growing my Glutes in 2022. Regardless of anything. I've been on the booty builder every single day. I did 270 the other day on it for eight reps. For Hip Thrust. Yeah, for the Hip Thrust.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (23:35)

Thank you for contrarian, right?

KAYLA BARNES (23:37)

Yeah, exactly. I actually just started following him. I'm getting all the tips that I can possibly get.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (23:43)

Yeah. Brett's a good friend. We actually ran a study together on hip thrusting versus squatting in high school soccer players a couple of years ago. And I've known Brett for a very long time, and he's done a phenomenal job of giving people a lot of information about how to make that one group of muscles get bigger.

KAYLA BARNES (24:00)

Absolutely. So what are your tips? What do you think, like, the top three exercises are for?

DR. ANDY GALPIN (24:06)

Oh, I'm just going to default right back to Brett. Go follow that, Brett. This is his whole career.

KAYLA BARNES (24:12)

Yeah, it is. Well, you'll connect us at some point because we have some questions. But anyways, I think I'm moving in the right direction, just focusing on lifting really heavy. And I agree with you. I think people can do so much more than they might give themselves credit for because especially when you're on an assisted machine like that, the worst thing that's going to happen for the most part, is you're not going to move the weight. So just try it.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (24:35)

I think in general, actually, especially if you're at a commercial gym, people are always thinking are always worried that other people in the gym care about them. And then when you're in there you realize you don't care about what anyone else is doing. So they don't care about what you're doing for the most part. So who cares? Again, if I walk into the gym 20 plus years of strength training, I know for sure I will not be the strongest person in there. So if you're not the absolute strongest who's ever walked in there, then you're just weak. So who cares? We're just all gradients of weak. That's all that means. When you're not number one, that means you're not good. So who cares?

KAYLA BARNES (25:15)

Absolutely.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (25:17)

Whatever. No one's going to be like, oh my gosh, girls only hit thrust in 275 or 200 or 65, whatever. Like book air train.

KAYLA BARNES (25:25)

Yeah, no, absolutely. I totally agree with that. People are so much less focused on what you're doing. Okay, so let's talk about hypertrophy. So actually growing the muscle. What are the basics here? Or kind of walk us through? What's the mechanism of actually growing the muscle? I always hear time under tension. I don't know if that plays a role. Not so much. Okay, so yes, let us know. What are the basics here? How can we grow bigger muscles if that's the goal?

DR. ANDY GALPIN (25:51)

Sure. Strength training is trying to create an adaptation and adaptation of function. In other words, when you say you got stronger, what that means is you're able to move some amount of weight that you couldn't previously do before. So it is a performance metric, right? So actually it doesn't even account for physiological changes. Of course this happened. What I'm saying is hypertrophy is only a visual representation of physiological changes. Force and strength is not. It is a representation of an ability. So the fundamental concept is different here. Now there is obviously a huge overlay for most people. As they get strong, they're going to add some muscle, or if you add muscle, you're going to get a little bit stronger. When you start getting past these early ages in training, these adaptations split and so you can get a lot stronger for a very long time without adding a pound of muscle. And you can get a lot of muscle without getting very strong either. And so they are intertwined, of course, and they have the Venn diagram. There's some percentage in the middle where they're both going to do, but there's also a big chunk on the outside where one is not going to do much to the other.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (27:08)

So in the case of strength training, we have to go strong to get stronger. Specificity hypertrophy, it doesn't matter as long as we convince the muscle to grow, the methods are totally irrelevant. And so if you go back to that same model of KOF, those modifiable variables, exercise choices. Okay. Now instead of having to be stuck to multi joint exercises, you can do multi joint and they tend to be actually better, but you can also do single joint. Now a lot of people just jump all the way to single joint exercises fortropy, and it's fine. But again, I'm going to tell you the research is quite clear here. Multi joint exercises even write per generally better. So start and those should be the core of your program and then do some isolation for single joint exercise afterwards. In terms of the exercise order, it's almost irrelevant for it's very relevant for strength, because if you're fatigued and then you try to lift heavy and you can't lift as heavy as you could have, you're not actually optimizing strength development because you're not actually training at that 95% now you're training at 85% because you're tired.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (28:21)

Well, hypertrophy, the percentages are relevant. So it doesn't matter what order you do them in. So you could theoretically do your smaller exercises first and then go do your big exercises, knowing that you can't lift as much on those big exercises. But who cares? Because you're not trying to put a number on the board. You're trying to cause an internal adaptation. So it doesn't matter in terms of the frequency. You probably can't do hypertrophy as often as strength training because we're trying to allow for a stimulus, a resulting adaptation. We have to grow a new tissue, and we have to let that new tissue solidify and be a new, permanent thing. Strength, I don't care. Again, it's a performance space. I'm not trying to cause a physiological change, and there is one, but that's not the point. So you can strengthen every day exact same muscle groups, no problem. In fact, the best in the world do that for the most part, right? Or close. Hypertrophy is not the same. You probably need a lot more rest. So this is where I would say, hey, if you wanted to strengthen your glutes five, six days a week, that would be fine.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (29:30)

You wanted to hypertrophy your glutes, you probably shouldn't train them to complete exhaustion. Once every three days is probably the Max. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday would be like, okay, you're still may be pushing it a little bit, you'd be okay. But like Monday, Thursday probably a better split for your glutes. Right? If you're really trained, you can add a third day, but at least a full day off for 48 hours being even better, maybe 72, depending on who you are. So intensity is almost totally irrelevant. You can go anywhere between 30% of your one recommends all the way to like. It can be really, really low as long as you're taking it to the same level of fatigue. So if you're doing a lower intensity, then you have to do a higher repetition range if you're doing a higher intensity than the repetition range. So coming to our next variable, which is volume, the reps percent, again, are almost irrelevant. Anywhere between five reps percent to 30. It doesn't really matter. What matters with hypertrophy is that you're driving the same amount of global fatigue, if you will. So the rest intervals, it's a similar thing.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (30:43)

Honestly. It can be as low as 30 seconds or as high as five minutes. Those are shown to be equally effective. But what we have to understand is hypertrophy. The volume, intensity and rest intervals are interplaying here. So if I go shorter rest intervals, that's going to reduce my intensity and potentially my repetition. Okay, fine. It's just working through a different mechanism. If I go higher rest, well, then I got to do more reps or I got to go heavier, right? I can't go high reps, I can't go, sorry, high rest, low weight, low reps. That's not going to work, right? For a trip. It's not enough total accumulated work. So you can play with any of these variables really however you'd like, because if I go higher repetitions, that means that either going to have to take higher rest or I might have to go lower weight. So they're all going to directly play with each other and all of it works. The rest intervals, we've covered the volume. Everything else has been covered for hypertrophy. In terms of frequency, it doesn't really matter. The global thing with hypertrophy is that you're taking it really close to muscular failure.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (31:54)

You don't actually have to go all the way there, but you probably got to get to where you're like. I probably had maybe one more rep left and you're probably at least five reps per set or higher most of the time. The very standard example is like eight to twelve reps per set for three to four sets per exercise. That's a really standard, again thing we would recommend. But you can go nuts. You can do two sets of 25, you could do six sets of ten. You could go all over the place within this thing. It's going to get there difference. So what you want to do in terms of your program design is kind of pick something, stick with that for four or five weeks, and then maybe slightly alter it. So maybe you're going to start with your standard three sets of ten at 70%. What does that mean? Well, by the time you finish that 10th rep on that third set, you should be probably pretty close to failure. If you finish that and you're like, oh, yeah, that burned. It's probably not enough. If you finished that last set and that last rep and you're like, oh, gosh, you probably even need a spotter, maybe even someone has to take it, then you're probably in a really good spot, right?

DR. ANDY GALPIN (33:12)

You did two or three exercises, the muscle group, and you did that twice per week, and you do that for a month. And then you say, okay, I'm going to move from three sets of ten and I'm going to go to three sets of 15. Okay, great. And you work your way up, or you can actually go down like you could start at sets of 25, two sets of 25. Permission. Next month I'm going to go two sets of 20, but heavier, or I'm going to go three sets of 16, but a little heavier. And so you're slowly progressing these things over time. By the end of the year comes, you've actually trained a lot in these different ranges, and that's going to keep you, like pretty fresh and pretty healthy and stop you from plateauing.

KAYLA BARNES (33:53)

Yeah, I actually did it. I used to do a lot more reps and now I've really brought it down to less reps, higher weight, but really focusing on pretty much going to failure every single set.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (34:06)

Yeah. Most people actually, that's really an insight because most people hear that and they're going to hedge the higher reps. Yeah. Okay, that's good. I'll put it straight. Most of the time when I'm on hypertrophy related media production, the general problem you see is people don't go heavy enough relative to the opposite. So if you spend if you're like, man, I've been training for a while and I haven't made any progress with peaks. Some people are like, I'll just start doing more reps and almost always you find more benefit when you go heavier, more reps. I'd rather you do like seven, six, seven, go heavy and do that for a little while and then you're going to see some changes.

KAYLA BARNES (34:46)

Yeah, absolutely. Nowadays I'm keeping my rep range like six to eight, but Luckily I usually have someone, either a training partner or a trainer because I go all the way until I can't push the weight any further. So I think that's the key. And I think that's like the biggest takeaway that's been the biggest change for me is depending on how you want your body to change, you have to show up and you have to really push yourself to failure. And it seems like you agree with that if you really want to see that hypertrophy and change in the muscles. So very exciting. Are there any other last tips for hypertrophy that you want to give?

DR. ANDY GALPIN (35:22)

The only thing I do want to say on this is you don't need to necessarily get as sore as possible. In fact, that's probably a deleterious place to be, but you have to work. It has to be fatiguing at some level. So you either need to kind of feel a pump in the muscle during the workout or you need to be a little bit sore the next day if you're like, I don't feel the muscle working, I don't feel the pump at the end of the workout. It never gets sore. That muscle is probably not actually doing much work. So you either need to choose a different exercise because that exercise selection isn't hitting that muscle group for you personally, just because your joint angles are different, your body size is different, not everyone grows pecks from a bench. It's just that like some people, it's more effective for the shoulder. Actually, some people it's more effective for their arm. So if you're not feeling it in the workout, you're not feeling at all the next day, it's probably not going to grow. So either choose a different exercise or work harder so you put more weight on or do more reps.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (36:30)

If you do that, you'll see progress.

KAYLA BARNES (36:33)

Agreed. What are your thoughts? Or do you have any thoughts on the muscle mind connection? Because when I actually stopped listening to music and really started to focus on the muscle that I was working, like as an example, I wanted to strengthen my triceps for years, and I was doing tricep workouts all the time, but I wasn't really seeing the progress I wanted to until I started to really think about that muscle and flex it as hard as I could every time I was working the tricep. Do you have any thoughts on this?

DR. ANDY GALPIN (37:03)

Yeah, there's no question it's more effective. We actually have science to support that now, but you're going to see that from EMG muscle activation. So when we actually measure how much the most is being activated, as well as outcomes. So whose prices gets bigger after eight weeks. But it's very clear anyone from the bottom building community will have told you this for three decades as well, that you need to make sure that the muscle you want to grow is contracting very hard. The quality is more important. And specifically the case of hypertrophy. Remember, you don't really care if your strength is going up and your tricep pushed down when you're trying to put your feet. What you care is the muscle is growing. And so if you can focus on the muscle more and get a stronger contraction, the weight on the bar is just an outside fake thing, right? In fact, you'll see bodybuilders will be able to tell you that they can get equal hypertrophy and maybe even less weight than you do because they're going to even contract their triceps harder with lower weight because they're just much better at focusing and paying attention to the muscle.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (38:06)

They want to grow and they can really squeeze it. And whether it's squeezing because you're wanting it to squeeze or squeezing to move away, it doesn't know. It doesn't matter. It's just how hard can you contract that muscle? The weight on the bar just helps you contract the muscle hard. That's all it's doing. And if you can do that without the weight, it's the same damn thing. There's no difference there. So in that particular case, it's just about causing the insult in the muscle and then you'll get your adaptation.

KAYLA BARNES (38:34)

Yeah, I love the whole concept because then I just started to make progress so much quicker just to recap how many days when you're doing hypertrophy. So if you do biceps on Monday, how many days do you need to rest and wait until you do biceps again for hypertrophy.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (38:52)

Again, I'd say a minimum of 48 hours, 48 to 72 is probably the sweet spot for most people most of the time.

KAYLA BARNES (38:59)

Okay, perfect. So what about endurance training? This I'm a little bit more new, too, because I don't really do too much endurance training, but I know a lot of people really love it. What are the basics there? And some things that people should know if they want to, I guess, increase their endurance.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (39:15)

Endurance is just pain tolerance. That's what it is. Right. So there's a couple of ways to actually think about endurance. It's overcoming fatigue. And there's also been sustained energy production. Those aren't the same thing. If you think about your spin class or CrossFit or any of those things, you're just in pain. And it's how well you can sustain while fatigue. That's very different than your ability to sustain energy over time under a small level of fatigue. So my friend colleague that I work with a lot, Dan Garner, longtime bodybuilder and strength trainer, and he's actually doing his first ever marathon Sunday. And he's like, man, he was talking yesterday. He's like, you're in pain and you're not fatigued. It's just like, how long can you just continue to sustain work output? And it's just mental. And all those things are true. The mental part of high fatigue is you're in pain. Do you want to quit? The mental part of the longer duration stuff is it's not that hard right now, but you have so much longer to go, oh, my gosh, the carrot is so far away. The carrot with the interval stuff is like, you only have ten more seconds.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (40:34)

But this hurts so badly. This is so painful. Want to quit. That's really what those two things come down to. You can find joy in all of them. Of course, the higher the intensity, the more actually really high fatigue stuff. Probably the less often you should do it. So you probably shouldn't be doing these maximum heart rate throw up on the floor intervals every day. It's probably not a good place to be in for most people.

KAYLA BARNES (41:02)

Yeah, I agree with that. And all around it seems very intense. And maybe that's why I don't do the really long runs. But what about Vo two Max training? Do you have any opinion on that?

DR. ANDY GALPIN (41:14)

Yeah, of course. It's a huge part of human health and athletics. Right. So we've known this since Stephen Blair's work in the 1990s. This is in every exercise physiology textbook. It's in every exercise science class for 30 plus years. That one of your major predictors of mortality is going to be Vo to Max. And it's kind of interesting because the health of Sphere, I guess they've caught window recently and they're super excited about Vo two Max. But again, this has been in every exercise physiology classroom that I've ever been a part of going back to. So it's very well known to be very strong and arguably the most significant predictor of mortality. It's also one of the most significant direct predictors of athletic performance. So it's very important to have that. We've done a lot of research on it. It's very modifiable with training and it's very functional relevant. We've done research and, of course, tons of young folks the Vo to Max and athletes in different areas. We've also done it on 90 plus year old cross country skiers. We've compared 80 plus year old non exercisers to exercise. We've done a ton of research.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (42:23)

I went over to Stockholm and did a study over there with 80 plus year old cross country skiers who had been world Champions and Olympic Champions in the 19s, 40s and 50s and had not stopped competing. So they had documentation of 50, 60 plus years of consecutive races and just not missed a year of racing in these events compared those to individuals who are age matched but didn't have any form of exercise. And the VL two maximum of the non exercisers was like 20 to 25. And that's Melissa Per Kilogram commitment. That's really important because any time you cross below, like 18, that's what we call our level of independence or line of independence. So when you're below that, you can't live independently in general anymore. And so if you're walking around at 22 or 23 and then anything bad happens, you get a cold or hurt something. Your Vo two Max drops so quickly because you stop moving, you lose fitness that you're probably not going to be able to sustain living by yourself. Well, our cross country skiers are closer to 35 or 40, with some of them being over 90. With the Vo two Max was just under 40.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (43:35)

And for reference, 35 to 40 is kind of the normal value for your average College male. So these are 80 plus year olds that had the cardiovascular fitness of 20 year olds and they were double their age matched cohorts these people are just absolute monsters physiologically. So it's very important to have that high. And again, it's very trainable. It's very easy to train. It doesn't take anything in particular, but it stands for your volume of oxygen consumed. So it's a maximum amount of volume of oxygen you can consume and use. And it's really a function of a couple of equations. It's cardiovascular output, which is how much blood can you pump out of your heart per pump. And then the second half is called AVO, two different and AVO, two differences are just a difference in oxygen between your arteries and your veins. And for a little bit of review here, anatomy, blood gets pumped from your heart and it goes away, it goes into muscles, it comes out of those things. And anyone that's had about a functional a little bit of physiological training knows the difference between an artery in a vein right?

DR. ANDY GALPIN (44:40)

One goes to the heart. One comes away from the heart. Well, in either case, as it's going out of the heart, it's going to go to a muscle. In order to get into a muscle, it's going to go through a bunch of capillaries. So it comes in, it goes into capillaries, capillaries surround the muscle, it diffuses into the muscle. All the nutrients get in, oxygen, glucose, et cetera, and all the waste products, carbon dioxide, oxygen, all kinds of other stuff comes back out of the capillaries and they go back in and then the circle back to the heart. Well, the difference in option between the arteries and the veins tells you exactly how much the muscle extracted. So if I know how much blood is being pumped out of your heart per pump, and then I know how much the oxygen is being taken uptick in the muscle, because I can just say, hey, there was 20 when it came into the muscle as a number and it was 15 when it came out, that means your muscle took five. Not very good. But if there was 20 when it came in and there was five when it left, that means your muscle T 15 means you're very good at extracting oxygen using it.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (45:39)

All this is functionally telling us is how well you can move and utilize oxygen throughout the body, which is your functional requirement to produce energy. It's not your energy source, but it's required to do any if we know that. And it's very clear and easy to understand why that's going to be important for both performance as well as general health, because it doesn't matter what you're doing. You just simply have to have oxygen to keep the truck alive.

KAYLA BARNES (46:04)

Agreed. And how would you recommend training your Vo two Max? I do kind of like this running situation, but.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (46:13)

You have any number of ways. All you have to do is challenge. You have to challenge the cardiovascular or the capillary system. It doesn't really matter. We can see improvements in Vo two Max by doing long, low intensity, sustained training. So this could even be something as simple as 40 minutes cycling at 70%. Right. So this is like maybe even a conversational pace, maybe a little bit like you're having a conversation, but it's not like it's a little bit of a labor conversation, like walking. That's probably not going to do it. Your heart rate needs to be up and you need to be moving. You probably should be a little bit out of breath. You don't have to be exhausted throwing up. But if you're going to read a magazine and literally have a full conversation, that's probably not going to drive very much. It's just not enough of a challenge that system. So that is fine. Longer, more sustained workout. But cool if you want to do more of a cardiac output. So this is like ten to 15 minutes. You can't talk right now at all. This is a two mile run, but you're trying to go as hard as you can.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (47:20)

This is whatever it's going to be or all the way down to really high intensity stuff. All of these things have been shown numerous times to improve Max. It could be as short as 20 seconds of all out effort on a whole body movement, like a row or a sled push. It could sometimes be even less, but usually between like 30 seconds to 90 seconds of all at work with some rest. It could be short rest, or it could be very long rest. Actually, you can rest two or three or four minutes, then do it again. But you repeat that anywhere between like four to ten times, depending on your business. That's a tremendous driver of cardiovascular adaptation. All of these things are going to improve your Max, no question.

KAYLA BARNES (47:59)

I love that. And how many times a week do you think week or month would be optimal just to keep our cardiovascular system and our Vo two Max really strong?

DR. ANDY GALPIN (48:10)

You need to train it frequently, no doubt about it, more frequently than most. Like party. No question. You should be doing something for your cardiovascular system most days, right? So there's a bunch of ways you can do it. I think the way to think about this is the 10% rule. And the 10% rule is you should get a true Max, like right up there at least 10% of the time. So if you think about it this way, you're exercising five days a week, four weeks in a month. That's 20 exercise spouts in a month. If you touch the heart rate Max 10% of the time, that's two workouts a month. That's a really good minimum number where it's like you're on death store, you don't know who you are anymore. You're up there, right. People that try to do that two or three times a week. Again, some people work, but a lot of times that's not sustainable. So I'm just going to ask you two times, get to that store in your case. And that's because you're working on five days a week. People are working out three days a week. That's twelve workouts a month.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (49:14)

10% is one workout. So once a month, just get to this and same thing. Cool. We'll fly you there. I still want you getting that lower intensity stuff, minimum, three days a week, like probably minimum stuff that more moderate range, where you get up to like 85. We tend to call the cardiac output training. Like you're not talking, but you're not. Oh, my gosh, I can't see I might die here right now, but you're not having fun. You're focused, you're breathing very hard. There's nothing else going on. You should probably do that one a couple of times a week as well, a minimum, once a week. So if you did something once a week that is like 85% to 90% heart rate, and you sustain that for a few minutes, two or three times a week, you're a lower intensity, but more sustained for 20 plus minutes and then once a month minimum. Actually, once a week is really what I prefer. But at least once a month, that's the hard work. That's the Max party. Just really get up there as high as you can. And I know that's a pretty good spot for most people.

KAYLA BARNES (50:16)

Yeah, I think that's a good plan. I try to run a mile a day sometimes I take that as a walk, but I've been trying to work on just my running speed a little bit. And then when I do the Vo two Max training, I do four minutes of all out run, followed by six minutes of uncomfortable but not dying run. And then I do that for a total of 28 minutes. Does that sound like a decent. Okay, wonderful. What about recovery? I've heard you say some really incredible things about breath, but what are some of your favorite recovery protocols? I do a lot of sauna. I do a lot of cold therapy sometimes before my workout. I've seen some studies stating that that can give you some more reps, give you some more endurance. What are your favorite protocols?

DR. ANDY GALPIN (51:05)

Yeah, it's been individualized. So one thing that's very clear is any higher intensity workout, whether this is the cardiovascular type or the strength training type, it's very, very good to do some sort of down regulation for at least five minutes post workout. So this is as simple as finish the workout and spend five minutes with your eyes closed. Just breathing like to slow your breath down tend to exhale longer than you inhale, although even a one to one inhale to exhale is fine. But that's a very important protocol. You probably don't want to jump in the ice after training, unless we will do that with our athletes in season. But we're not trying to grow muscle in season. We're trying to typically recover from a game because we got to play again the next day or whatever. So it's a different thing. You can do a little sauna afterwards. I'm cool with that. But then you still need to downright after that. So you've got to get out of that and then slow things down. So those are some really common ones. There's a lot of other ones, like a Mark Pro is something I've used for many years.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (52:16)

It's really fantastic for recovery, so that's a good one. But then making sure everything else, sleep and nutrition are on point, those kill recovery as well.

KAYLA BARNES (52:29)

Do you have an aura ring, by any chance?

DR. ANDY GALPIN (52:32)

I do.

KAYLA BARNES (52:33)

You do. Can I ask you what your HRV is most days? Well, HRV numbers are irrelevant because just based on your own and the change in the HRV, right? Yeah.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (52:44)

Agreement, whether mine is like 110 or whatever. First of all, I wouldn't ever get HIV from Nora.

KAYLA BARNES (52:51)

Interesting.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (52:52)

No. If you want to check HIV, we're going to go way other places. The aura will tell you it's good about some things. They'll tell you when you fell asleep and how long you slept and some thunks. But if you want heavier or you want sleep staging, then we have much better technology for that. So with the athletes I work with, like, no offense or but like, a $300 thing on your finger is not like, that's not going to cut it. We have a much more extensive technology for quantifying actual sleep quality and then for actually making total sleep assessments, our sleep stuff is completely bonkers. Usually I am a ring right over here. So there's a lot of value using it. But that stuff is you've got to be careful there.

KAYLA BARNES (53:38)

Yeah. So if you were planning on a really hard training day but your HRV and the ordering was really low or telling you to hold off, do you think it's reasonable to kind of make it a lighter day, or do you think it's not that big of an indicator?

DR. ANDY GALPIN (53:52)

It's not an indicator at all.

KAYLA BARNES (53:55)

No.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (53:55)

So you have to do a couple of things. Number one, you run a little algorithm. Step number one, are you sure that you collected good data? Right. So sometimes the or tends to be very reliable. So that's cool. So if you're using aura, you're okay. If you're using other devices for HRV, you need to make sure that you did things under the right circumstances. And the right situation is the same that you always do. Is the ring? Does it fall off half the night or the strap or whatever? So, number one, make sure you have good data. Number two, you have to understand if you're in an adaptation or a peaking phase. If you're trying to cause adaptation and you're seeing signs of physiological strain, that's the point. That is exactly what you're trying to do. You're trying to cause stress. So if you're seeing signs of your stress, we are winning here. This is exactly what we're trying to do. If you're in a peaking phase again, like, say we have a World Series game the next day, or then it's like, hey, we're peaking right now. Physically, we're not trying to cause adaptations.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (54:59)

We're trying to get as best as we can tomorrow. So then we might back off. Number one, good or bad data? Yes or no? If it's bad data, who cares? Move on. If it's good data. Okay, great. Are we peaking or adapting for peaking? Don't do the workout if you're causing adaptation. Okay, great. Now I'm going to either continue on, I'm going to ask the next question, though. I'm going to ask whether or not we're worried about a duration. So has this been happening for more than three minimum? Three, but tend to have to be at least five to seven days. If it's a single individual day, I generally don't care if this is like, hey, I've looked at your slope over time and this has now been five days in a row that your HIV is down. Now if I'm an adaptation phase, I'm still training. We're trying to get there. If I'm in a peaking phase, then you're really going to be pulling out the brakes and being like, we got to do something right now. If it extends past seven days, even in adaptation phase, then I might go all right, let's throttle back right now for a day and see what happens here.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (56:06)

But a single individual day is totally useless in terms of changing. Unless you're really peaking.

KAYLA BARNES (56:13)

Very good. Great information. Well, it's been such a pleasure having you here with me today. I really appreciate yeah.

DR. ANDY GALPIN (56:21)

Thank you for the time. Absolutely.