Ep. #953: Research Roundup: Shortest Effective Workouts, Activity Trackers Inaccurate, Foam Rolling for Recovery, and More

Mike: [00:00:00] Hey there and welcome to muscle for life. I am Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for another research Roundup, where I am going to break down several studies for you that can help you get fitter and healthier, faster. My goals with these episodes are to give you a little bit of. Into the scientific method help you understand a little bit better how scientific studies are conducted and also to give you practical takeaways, things that you can implement right away to gain more muscle, lose more fat, achieve more health, achieve more happiness and so forth.

So in today’s episode, I am going to be talking about time efficient training, how to gain muscle and strength in just 30 minutes of training per week. And then I’ll be sharing a study on partial range of motion, deadlifts, and how using partial. Ranges of motion can help you get stronger. Then I’ll be talking about [00:01:00] foam rolling and answering a question that I often get, which is, can it help you with recovery?

And finally, I’ll be talking about activity trackers and how accurately they can measure your calorie expenditure. But first I’ve worked with tens of thousands of people over the years. And the biggest thing I see with the people I have helped the most is they’re often missing just one crucial piece of the puzzle.

And if you are. Having trouble reaching your fitness goals as quickly as you’d like, I’m gonna guess it is the same thing with you. You are probably doing a lot of things, right. But dollars to donuts, there’s something you’re not doing. Right. And that is what is giving you most of the grief. Maybe it’s your calories.

Maybe it’s your macros. Maybe it’s your exercise selection. Maybe it’s food choices. Maybe you are not progressively overloading your muscles and whatever it. Here’s what’s [00:02:00] important once you identify that one thing, once you figure it out, that’s when everything finally clicks that’s when you start making serious progress, it’s kind of like typing in your password to log into your computer.

You can have all the letters, numbers, and symbols, right? Except just one. And what happens? You can’t log in. Right. But as soon as you get that last remaining character, right? Voila, you’re in business. And I bet the same can be said about the body. You really want. You are probably just one major shift, one important insight, one powerful new behavior away from easy street.

And that’s why I offer V I P one-on-one coaching where my team and I can help you do exactly. That this is high level coaching, where we look at everything you’re doing and we help you figure out that one thing that is missing for you. And it can be a couple of things too. That’s fine. There’s no extra charge [00:03:00] for that, but once we figure it out, that’s when you start making real progress, that’s when you start looking better and feeling.

So if you’re ready to make more progress in the next three months than maybe you did in the last three years, and yes, that has happened for many of our clients head on over to muscle for life.show/vip that’s muscle F oor life.show/vip, and schedule your free consultation call, which by the way is not a high pressure sales call.

It’s just a friendly chat where we get to learn about you and your goals. And your lifestyle and then determine whether our program is right for you. Because sometimes we do speak with people who just aren’t a good fit for our service, but we almost always have other experts and other resources to refer those people to.

So if you are still listening to me and you are even slightly interested, go schedule your free consultation. Call [00:04:00] [email protected] slash VI. Okay. First up is a study on time efficient training. If you have very little time to train, how do you make the most of it? And my source here is a paper called no time to lift question mark, designing time efficient training programs for strength and hypertrophy, a narrative review.

And this was published on June 14th, 2021 in the journal sports medicine. So. Number one excuse that I hear from people for not training at all is I don’t have time. And unfortunately for procrastinators, maybe it’s fortunately, actually for procrastinators, everywhere. Researchers at Norwegian, university of science and technology decided to torpedo this idea with some science.

So specifically the researchers performed a. Review, which is where they compile evidence around a topic. And then they share their opinions about what it means. [00:05:00] And they did this to identify the most time efficient way to train and based on their understanding and interpretation of the data. Here’s what they recommend for a minimum effective dose of strength training.

So I’ll share their insights first and then talk a little bit about what you can expect from doing something like this. So here’s what they recommend for volume and frequency do at least one workout per week with it least for sets. Major muscle group. And as for intensity, they recommend anything between six and 12 reps per set with sets taken close to muscular failure.

You don’t have to train up to muscular failure, but you should be probably a rep or two shy of it in most sets. And as far as percentage of one rep max goes, that’s the range of Hm, 70, 65, 70% to about 80 to maybe 85%. As for exercise [00:06:00] choices, the researchers recommend that you prioritize compound barbell exercises that train your body bilaterally.

So both sides of your body at a time. No surprise there, of course, because that is a great way to involve large amounts of muscle mass. So think of a bilateral. Compound barbell exercise like the barbell squat, and how much muscle that involves, or the barbell deadlift versus maybe a leg extension, right?

An isolation exercise for your quads, or say a lying hamstring curl for your. Hamstrings next up, we have a recommendation on programming, which is to do at least one pushing exercise. Like maybe a bench, press one upper body pulling exercise, maybe a pull up and one leg pressing exercise, maybe a squat every week.

So push, pull legs. Basically as for rest intervals, if you’ve been [00:07:00] training for less than 12 months, you can rest one to two minutes in between your sets. And if you’ve been training for longer than that, you should rest probably between two and three minutes. And my advice here would be to rest as long as you need in between sets to feel ready for the next set.

But that is about what the researchers recommended for most people. And the reason why more experienced weightlifters need more rest is they are lifting heavier weights than beginners. And that is of course, harder on the body and takes a little bit more time to recover from. You can also incorporate more quote unquote advanced training methods to save time, like super sets, drop sets, rest, pause sets.

But you do want to know how to do those things correctly because there are many wrong ways to use those techniques and only a few right ways. And if you want to learn the right ways. Just listen to episode number 427 of my [00:08:00] podcast, which is an interview I did with Eric Helms on supersets drop sets, forced reps, and more.

And we don’t talk about rest pause sets, but I do have an article on that. And if you head over to Legion athletics.com and search for rest. Pause, just two words. You’ll see it. It’s called how to use rest, pause, training to gain muscle faster. And I’m just seeing here. Actually I do have a podcast on it as well, episode 3 34.

So you can read about it or listen to it, whatever you prefer. Okay. Moving on here to talk about warmups. So the researchers recommend exercise specific warmups only. So don’t do long, complicated warmup routines, you know, with exercise bands PlanMe and other stuff like that. Just stick to warming up for the exercise that you are going to be performing.

And remember, you don’t have to warm up. A muscle group twice. You just have to warm it up once. And then when you move from [00:09:00] one exercise for say your chest to another, of course you don’t have to, let’s say you’re gonna start with the bench press and you warm up with that. And then maybe later in your workout, maybe not exercise number two, but later in your workout, you’re gonna do some.

Peck flies. You don’t have to warm up for the Peck flies because even if it has been 10 or 15 minutes, since you did your bench pressing your pecks will be warmed up. And lastly, the researchers don’t recommend spending time stretching, unless you want to improve your flexibility. There’s nothing wrong with stretching, but again, we are looking to get the most out of the least amount of time possible.

And when that’s the. Don’t bother with stretching again, unless you want to, or need to improve your flexibility or mobility to train properly. So basically what we have here are. Traditional strength, training fundamentals, and just sticking with those except [00:10:00] using a lower frequency and a lower amount of volume than you might use.

If you’re trying to gain muscle and strength. And my only quibble. With these recommendations would be that drop sets are probably not the best use of time. And rest, pause sets can be difficult to do with compound exercises, but those are minor points. And if you have used those techniques before, and if you are an experienced weightlifter, you probably know that.

And you know that you can take those things. Leave them. And so the key takeaway really here is that you don’t need that much time to get fitter and stronger. If you are new to strength training, just doing that one workout per week will produce noticeable results for at least a couple of months. Once it stops producing results.

You could go to just two workouts per week and that would get the needle [00:11:00] moving again. And let’s say one workout per week produced results for a few months. Let’s say it’s three months and then two workouts per week might buy you another one and a half or two months before you need to change something.

You don’t necessarily need to go to three workouts per week, but you might need to make those two workouts per week, a little bit. Difficult. So they might get a little bit longer instead of 30 minutes per workout. Maybe it’s 45 minutes per workout. But the point again is you do not need to get in the gym for four or five, six plus hours per week to gain muscle and strength.

And especially not, if you are brand new, if you are very experienced, if you are a guy or gal who has gained most of the muscle and strength that is genetically available to you. Yeah, that’s what it takes. I mean, it’s gonna take somewhere between probably four and six hours of strength training per week to get in enough volume for not even necessarily all of the major muscle groups, but [00:12:00] at least the handful that you most want to.

Focus on, and that’s just what it’s gonna take to continue producing results. But at that point you’re basically jacked and wanting to get really jacked. And if you already are kind of jacked, if you are an experienced weightlifter who has gained a lot of muscle and strength, what you can take away from what I just shared with you is you don’t have to do much to maintain more or less all of your muscle.

And. Most, if not all of your strength, you can drop down to just three to six hard sets per major muscle group per week, and retain basically everything. You will certainly be able to retain your physique. You might lose some strength. Like if you’re going from, let’s say squatting. Nine to 12 sets per week, plus some additional lower body volume.

And then you drop to squatting just three sets per week. Again, you’ll maintain all of your muscle. If you [00:13:00] continue to train hard, use heavy weight, push close to muscular failure, but you might see your performance decline a little bit over time. Whatever decline might happen would quickly reverse once you started training more intensively.

So just to make this very practical here, for example, is a 30 minute workout that you could do once per week. If you are brand new to strength, training to start gaining noticeable amounts of muscle and strength. And if you are not brand new, This would be enough to maintain a lot of what you already have.

So you could start with a barbell back squat, or it could be a front squat or some sort of variation. It could be a safety bar squat, but some sort of squat and do four sets of six to eight reps. Again, pushing close to muscular failure. Maybe. Twoish good reps left in the tank and then you would fail. So the final rep in each set is difficult.

The bar is starting to slow [00:14:00] down and you are getting close to failing. Right. And then resting two-ish minutes in between each set, maybe up to three, if you are. Strong and then move over to the barbell bench, press. Do the same there. Four sets of six to eight, two ish, minutes of rest in between each set and then finish with a pull up four sets of six to eight reps with two ish minutes of rest in between sets.

And if you need to add weight by snatching a dumbbell in between your feet or using a dip belt to work in that rep range. You can do that. Or if you want to just replace that with a lap, pull down, for example, that would be okay as well. And if you want to make that workout even more time efficient, you could alternate between the sets of the bench press and the pullups.

And you could rest one minute or so one and a half minutes in between each. So do a set of the bench, press rest the minute, minute and a half go do. Pull up. So your lab pull downs rest a minute, minute and a half, go back to the bench press. [00:15:00] And that might negatively impact your performance in those exercises slightly, but it is not going to make nearly as much of a difference as say resting 16 to 90 seconds in between each set of an individual exercise.

So let’s say you’re bench pressing and you rest just 60 to 90 seconds in between each set, unless you are brand new. That is not going to be enough time to fully. Your performance and you are going to have to probably take weight off of the bar or minimally. You are going to lose a number of reps per set by say your final set.

So anyway, that’s it for time efficient training for now. Let’s now talk about. Partial range of motion, deadlifts and how this can help you get stronger. So my source here is a paper called the efficacy of partial range of motion, deadlift training, a pilot study, and this was published on February 22nd, 2022 in the journal international journal of sports science.[00:16:00] 

Now we have all heard how important it is to use a full range of motion in our strength training. And that is true, but there is an application for partial range of motion. Training. And this study is an example of that. So this was conducted by scientists at Southwest Minnesota state university and in it researchers split 19 college wrestlers with at least one year of weightlifting experience into two groups.

So you had a full range of motion, deadlift group and a partial range of motion. Deadlift group. Now, both of these groups followed the same three day training routine that included the bench press hang clean and back squat. And the only difference was that the full range of motion group did two sets of three to five reps of full range of motion deadlifts.

Whereas the partial range of motion group did one set of three to five reps of full range of motion, deadlifts, and three sets of heavy [00:17:00] partial range of motion deadlifts for a single. Now those partial range of motion, deadlifts were basically rack poles. So the bar started on the safety pins of a squat rack about one inch above their knee height.

And so what we had here is we had one group doing just normal deadlifts and then the other groups splitting their sets between normal deadlifts and. Heavy rack poles and the researchers measured full and partial range of motion deadlift one rep max strength at the beginning and the end of these six week study.

And what they found is that neither groups significantly increased their full range of motion, deadlift one rep max, but despite not being statistically significant, the full range of motion group did experience a small decrease in one rep max strength. So down about 12 pounds and the partial range of motion group experienced a.

Increase in one rep max strength. So plus about 10 pounds, the partial range of motion group also significantly increased their partial range of [00:18:00] motion deadlift one rep max by about 100 pounds. While the full range of motion group did not increase their partial range of motion deadlift significantly.

So about 26 pounds. So on the face of it, you could conclude then that doing a mix of full and partial range of motion training is just better than full range of motion training for gaining strength at least. But that would be getting hasty after all the only significant difference between the groups in this study was.

The partial range of motion, deadlift strength, which is not entirely surprising because of specificity, you get better at what you train. Right. But what this study does suggest is that partial range of motion exercises can have a. Place in a training program. And this isn’t a surprise to people who have done a lot of power lifting or just pure strength training, of course, because many programs [00:19:00] utilize partial range of motion exercises.

Now the key though is good programs. Don’t utilize partial range of motion exercises to replace full range of motion training. They use it to supplement it. Often. Partial range of motion exercises are used. To help you train specific parts of exercises that are most difficult, where you tend to get stuck on, say a deadlift or a squat or a bench press or an overhead press.

And so in the case of a deadlift, let’s say you struggle to lock out on the deadlift. And of course, this is most applicable to people who. Pushing the envelope who are really trying to get as strong as they can on this exercise. I’m not one of those people really. I mean, I’m happy to make slow but steady progress.

And so even someone like me might notice that the deadlift is most difficult, maybe in the lockout phase. And if that’s the [00:20:00] case, then the rack poll, which is basically what was done in this study, I shared with you would be useful for that because now you are training that specific. Portion of the exercise that you find most difficult, the lockout and cuz it is a partial range of motion.

You can use more weight than you normally can, right? In a, in a full range of motion deadlift. And there is a physiological benefit to that, but there’s also a psychological. Benefit to that, where you get more comfortable handling, very heavy loads, whatever very heavy is for you. Again, it’s gonna be much heavier on the rack pole than it is on the full range of motion deadlift and on the bench press, let’s say, are the overhead press.

If you find those last few inches are really a grind, then you could do something like the pin press a useful partial range of motion. Exercise for getting stronger through. The end of those exercises. And if you’re squatting and [00:21:00] you find it very difficult to get out of the hole, you could do the pin squat, or you could do pause, squats, very helpful, partial range of motion exercises that help you build that strength, where you are weakest and for what it’s worth.

There was a time when I was. Trying to push for a one rep max on the back squad of 4 0 5 and I got close. I got to, I wanna say 365 for two or three with zero to maybe one good reps left. So I was pretty close to failure. That was about max strength. And one of the techniques that really helped me with that was the pause squad I was doing.

I wanna say three. Four sets of pause squats every week. So I would start a warmup and then I would do three or four sets of heavy. Sometimes it was a back squat. Sometimes it was a front squat, usually just back squatting though, because I wanted to see if I could get to 4 0 5 on the back squat. So I would do my three or four [00:22:00] heavy sets of the barbell back squat.

And then I would follow that up with three or four heavy sets of pause squats. So that’s a slight pause at the bottom. Maybe two or three seconds pause at the bottom and then push back up outta the hole and the highest amount of weight that I can remember doing on the pause squats, probably 2 75 to 2 95, something like that for sets of probably four to six.

And that helped a lot as I was getting stronger on the pause squat, I was noticing a steady increase on my full normal. Squatting. And so then the key takeaway here is partial range of motion. Exercises can be used strategically to help you get stronger on key exercises. That’s their best use but they should be used sparingly and as needed.

And if you don’t use any, that doesn’t mean you are doing anything wrong. If you [00:23:00] are not too concerned with trying to maximize. Your bench or squat or overhead press or deadlift, you probably don’t need to be doing any partial range of motion training. Hey there. If you are hearing this, you are still listening, which is awesome.

Thank you. And if you are enjoying this podcast, or if you just like my podcast in general and you are getting at least something out of it, would you mind sharing it with a friend? Or a loved one or a not so loved one, even who might want to learn something new word of mouth helps really bigly in growing the show.

So if you think of someone who might like this episode or another one, please do tell them about it. Okay. Now let’s talk about foam rolling. And my source here is a paper called the influence of foam. Rolling on recovery from exercise induced muscle damage. And this was published in [00:24:00] September of 2019 in the journal of strength and conditioning research.

Many people claim that foam rolling can help your muscles recover after training, by squishing out all of the uey, gooey, metabolites, and acids and stuff that accumulates when you train and breaking up adhesions and trigger points and other bad things that hinder. Recovery and years ago, when I started to look into foam rolling, I was encouraged by some of the research that I saw.

It wasn’t conclusive, but it suggested that foam rolling might be able to do some of those things and do it enough to make it. Worth it. But since then in the last couple of years, I have seen more and more evidence to the contrary. And this study that I’m sharing with you backs that up in this case, researchers split 37 men who hadn’t foam rolled in 30 days into two groups, a [00:25:00] foam rolling group.

And. Non foam rolling group. And on the first day of the experiment, the researchers gathered baseline data by measuring the participant’s hip abduction range of motion. So how far they could move their thigh out to the side away from their body’s center line, that’s abduction, abduction. They also measured hamstring muscle length, agility, and muscle soreness in the quads, hamstrings, glutes, and calves.

Then after both groups warmed up the foam rolling. Performed six foam rolling exercises, targeting the quads, hamstrings, glutes, and calves using a high density foam roller on both legs for two 62nd bouts each and the non foaming group did nothing. Of course, then both of the groups completed a sprint workout consisting of 40 15 meters sprints.

And. Yeah, you heard that right? 40 15 meter sprints. That sucks. But anyway, so then after that, the foam rolling group [00:26:00] did the same foam rolling protocol as they did before the workout and the non foam rolling group, again, did nothing. And to finish the first day of the study, the researchers assessed the participants’ recovery, using the same methods that they used to gather their baseline data.

And then they took the same measurements again every day, over the next four days. And the foam rolling group also performed that same foam rolling routine before each of those daily visits. And what did those people get for mashing and maing their legs? Well, they didn’t get. Much. So the results showed that the participants in the foam rolling group did not improve measures of muscle soreness, hamstring muscle length, hip abduction, range of motion or vertical jump performance.

More than those in the non foam rolling group. Now. One exception was that the foam rolling did seem to help these people maintain their agility [00:27:00] slightly better than doing nothing. Of course you have to wonder if you could get the same benefits from other stuff like maybe doing some leg swings or maybe an active recovery workout or two, maybe just going on a couple of walks doing, I don’t know, five minutes of yoga or.

Were these benefits truly unique to foam rolling, but what this study and several others, like it show is that there is a growing body of evidence that shows that foam rolling is not going to help you recover faster from your workouts. Getting a massage that can. Going for a bike ride or a walk that can taking certain supplements like creatine and protein powder.

If you struggle to eat enough protein. Yep. Those things can help. But foam rolling seems to be a waste of time in that regard. All right. Last up, I have a study for you on activity trackers and why they are not a good way [00:28:00] to estimate calorie expenditure. So my source here is a study called wrist worn devices for the measurement of heart rate and energy expenditure, a validation study for the apple watch six polar vantage five.

I’m assuming it’s a V, but no, I’m assuming it’s Roman num. Five and Fitbit since, and this was published on January 21st, 2022 in the European journal of sports science. And I wanted to discuss this because people often ask me about these activity trackers and one of the main draws of these devices, like the apple watch and whoop.

Band and Fitbit products is that they claim to accurately measure the calories you burn throughout the day and from exercise in particular. And that sounds nice for those of us who understand energy balance and would like to be able to easily calibrate our eating to our moving. But how accurate are these devices?

Really well scientists at the university of [00:29:00] Quebec in Montreal attempted to answer this question by testing the accuracy of three popular. Wearables the apple watch six, the polar vantage five and the Fitbit sense. And the researchers had 30 men and women sit, walk, run, lift weights, and cycle for 10 minutes while they wore each of those devices.

And to calibrate the accuracy of the activity trackers, the researchers also had the participants where medical devices proven to accurately measure heart rate and energy expenditure. And the long story short here is the wearables were about as accurate as Al Gore’s climate change predictions. Not only were these devices wildly off the mark, they were also inconsistently inaccurate, making them completely unreliable.

And this distinction between consistency and accuracy is important. Cause if, say. Bit consistently under predicted your calorie expenditure by say a hundred calories from every workout [00:30:00] you could work with that that could still help you establish a baseline from which you could modify your eating and exercise habits.

Even though that number isn’t exactly correct. Inaccurate data can still be useful if it is consistently inaccurate. And if you understand that it is inaccurate and if you know how. Inaccurate it is and can adjust accordingly. Instead though, these devices were inconsistent and inaccurate. They were sometimes over predicting sometimes under predicting and in no discernible fashion.

Now, one exception is that the apple watch was actually fairly accurate at measuring heart. Which is useful. If you want to track the intensity of your cardio workouts of your endurance training, it still did not accurately or reliably estimate calorie expenditure. And this isn’t the only study to show that commercially available activity trackers are not very good.

At [00:31:00] estimating how many calories that we burn and their accuracy hopefully will improve over time. It’s something of a moot point, really, because a much better way to control your eating is to use math. And if you want calculators to do the math for you, just head over to Legion athletics.com/tools, and you’ll find, for example, a TDE E total daily energy expend.

Calculator. And that has some tried and tested math that will allow you to accurately estimate how many calories you are burning at rest every day. And how many calories you are burning based on your activity levels. And then what you can do is simply adjust. Based on how your body actually responds.

And then you will learn your body’s ranges of calorie expenditure. You will understand that when you follow your normal [00:32:00] routine, you burn, let’s say anywhere from. Depending on your gender and size anywhere from 2000 to maybe 3000 calories per day. Now, of course you wouldn’t be working with such a large range.

Like I know for example, when I lift weights five or six hours per week and do a couple of hours, two or three hours of moderate intensity cardio per week, if I eat around 3000, 2,800 to 3000 calories per day, my weight more or less stays the same if I want to. I need to eat. Eh, I usually go down to 23, 2400 calories per day.

That’s cutting. And if I wanted to lean bulk, I would start around 32 to 3,300 calories per day. And because I know that those numbers work for my body and my lifestyle. It’s also easy to adjust them if my lifestyle changes. So if I am more physically active than normal, it’s pretty easy. To estimate that additional energy expenditure and add in a couple hundred calories, or if I am not as physically [00:33:00] active, like for example, this week I am deloading and my deload workouts are shorter and easier than my normal workouts, of course.

And so I’m burning a bit less energy in those workouts, a couple hundred calories less. And so then. Easily adjust for that. By just eating a bit less of whatever I normally eat, or maybe removing a food or two in my meal plan, you know, like maybe eating a bit less rice at dinner, or maybe pulling out one serving of fruit because I eat probably three-ish servings per day, which is fine, but two is fine as well.

So maybe I skip the banana or I skip the apple and I. Bit less rice for dinner, and I’m still at my maintenance ish calories. And I can make that adjustment without consulting a device or even a calculator. So again, if you are not sure how many calories you’re burning or how to figure that out, just head over to lesion [00:34:00] athletics.com/tools.

Check out the total daily energy expenditure calculator. Tool. And that will give you an accurate evidence based estimate of how many calories you are burning every day. And then you can work with that as a baseline and adjust based on how your body actually responds. Well, I hope you liked this episode.

I hope you found it helpful. And if you did subscribe to the show, because it makes sure that you don’t miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you.

And if you didn’t like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have. Ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share. Shoot me an email Mike muscle for life.com, muscle F or life.com. And let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you’d [00:35:00] like to see me do in the future.

I read everything myself. I’m always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode. And I hope to hear from you soon.