Hacking Your Health
Hacking Your Health Podcast with Ben Canning and Dave Kennedy - Two guys setting out to hack body, mind, business and beyond. We are here to provide a single source, bullshit free guide to understanding your body and how you can live better, for longer.
Hacking Your Health
Creatine is Overrated? Why the Science Might Be Wrong // Ep. 166
Ben and Dave return to discuss recent developments in fitness research and share personal updates on their cutting phases and body composition goals.
• Dave is aiming to drop 10 more pounds to reach 215-216 lbs, which would be his leanest yet with his current muscle mass
• Ben is preparing to start his own cutting phase in the coming weeks for an event approximately 11 weeks away
• New research challenges the effectiveness of standard 5g creatine dosing for muscle growth benefits
• Studies suggest 10g of creatine may be necessary for cognitive benefits
• Training to failure is discussed as a simpler, more effective approach than trying to leave "1-2 reps in reserve"
• Recent meta-analysis shows no significant difference between eccentric and concentric training for muscle hypertrophy
• Both hosts advocate for controlled tempo training for improved mind-muscle connection and injury prevention
• Simplicity in training approach is emphasized over complicated techniques that may only benefit advanced bodybuilders
We're excited about the new program launches and protein products coming soon. Follow along with our cutting progress and stay tuned for more evidence-based discussions on fitness and nutrition.
Check out Overclock and Protein Protocol here
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Yo, hey, what's up everybody. Welcome to Hacking Health Podcast. I'm your host, ben Cunningham, with Dave Kennedy. Well, welcome back to the show Just straight up. Apologize straight away of uh going mia and not mentioning anything about it, or do?
Dave:we just ignore it. What, what? I think we've been doing this consistently. This is, this is normal. Yeah, no, yeah, I think we've been. We've been. We've been a bit bit busy, uh, with a lot of stuff going on. Ben's been kicking off his new program we got a new protein coming out. I just did an acquisition for our company so life has been taking us into a lot of different ways, but we're here today. I'm sick, by the way, so if you hear me coughing and hacking, I got some nasty virus in Vegas with my kids over spring break, so I'm recovering. I've not lifted since Sunday, which is killing me, and I I messaged ben today saying, ben, should I lift or not? And ben's like, don't do it, wait another day. I'm like, all right, fine, um, but I might go lift after this.
Ben:We'll see well, a whole new uh, a whole new angle on hacking dave. Yeah, yeah, yes, we have been busy, but that's not an excuse, and I think I did text you that we could skip today and we get it in tomorrow, but I think we had done that too many weeks in a row and we just weren't able to align schedules. But we are here, we are back. We are sorry. That's the update. Yeah, yeah, well, cool, well that's it.
Dave:We're good, we're good.
Ben:We're good. Yeah, we're good. We're good, we've covered it. I'm in a new office.
Dave:Yeah, looks good.
Ben:That's another thing. I also moved house, yeah.
Dave:How's your house?
Ben:I have a new house. It's good.
Dave:Is there a lot of things going wrong with it yet that?
Ben:guy did I tell you? The guy fell through the ceiling. Yeah, he fell through the ceiling. A house, a new built house, on the uh, 13th of march, and the guy came to connect the solar panels to electric or something I didn't know what was going on um, and fell through the ceiling of the bathroom, and so I'd hold the ceiling of the bathroom, which was fantastic, uh. But aside from that, nothing else has gone wrong.
Ben:Touch wood, um, they built that thing fast, like in america that would have taken like two years like I, I, I, I knew it would happen fast, but I've obviously been in the street and in and out, and on Sunday I went, I walked from my house to the shop with Harper and it's like a 15 minute walk there and back and I had saw they had put scaffold up to build another house. On Monday there was an entire house there. The whole wooden frame was there. I was like what the like? I didn't realize how quickly it happened, but yeah, they built the class. It's good.
Ben:It's good to have the space, um, just to, I mean, it's good just have the environment and have my own space and and just, it's not that far from the gym. So it has been a good to get back into routine and sort of, I guess, recalibrate pretty much everything in my life. So, yeah, great success. Although the whole nascenum is not the one, yeah, I can feel that it's fine. It's fine. I will always know that the hole was there, but that's okay. But apart from that, um, like you said last, new program which is going well, uh, you got your new check-in sheet today good, it looks awesome.
Dave:The new check-in sheet looks absolutely amazing. Um, like a lot of, a lot of great data in there to be able to sift through and kind of push through it. I like the journal as well, so the biome calculator and all that good stuff, so I'm excited about actually pushing it through. We're knee deep in the cutting phases right now.
Dave:It's funny the other day I had my shirt off and I was in the shower and Aaron's like Whoa, where'd that six pack come from? I'm like that's where that cut comes into place. And she's like you're good, right? I'm like Nope, I still got 10 more pounds to go. She's like why do you? Why do you need to lose 10 more pounds? You look great. I'm like that's more of like a mental thing for me. It's like I need to make sure I can do it, you know, and that I can like right now, right, if I lose 10 pounds, that'll put me down to 216 or 215, which I think will be the leanest that I've ever been doing this, doing this by far that will be the lightest version of you that we've ever had, with the most muscle mass, and I think you obviously sent the photos through this morning or yesterday, uh.
Ben:And then one of the part of the new check-in sheet is a sort of predicted rate of loss and I put in like roughly 0.5% or minus 1.5% of body weight and that puts us at like two. I think it was just over 217 for the end date, which is like nine weeks away. So yeah, 217, 216. I think we will see a best version of Dave yet, which I'm excited for.
Dave:Me too, me too, it's going to be crazy. I'm definitely going to push myself as hard as I can. I've already scaling back and you know counting everything, and I have been counting everything, but just making sure, like you know, I'm locked into it no snacks, no late night things, just like back to the you know, grinding of it. And it's actually interesting, like you know, once I have my mindset to it, it just goes. It's like a natural progression. It's like, okay, I don't need to eat right now, I'm good. You know, this is, this is all I'm allowed to have today, so I'm gonna keep going on the rest of the day like it's weird.
Ben:Uh, it's the first time it's happened to me before, so it's so far, so good, good it's funny because I'm in the process of like on the brink of starting a cut and it keeps saying, james, I'm like, I'm ready to go and obviously I've worked with James before and um, he's like, no, we'll wait, we'll wait. And the end goal for the date for me, uh, for Matt's event in a week is about 11 weeks away and, uh, I think he knows me well enough to know that I can't mentally get my head around like 10 or 11 weeks. So I saw on the sheet I was checking it out, yeah, yesterday. Um, in about three weeks time it says start to push. So he knows that I can do about seven or eight weeks and that seems sort of like okay, right, well, this is what we're doing now. But it's strange because I'm just in this phase of like okay, well, like I'm, I'm just roughly at maintenance calories and I'm training and I feel good and I'm doing cardio, but like I'm ready to push it, uh, but he knows what my capacity is for that. So we're a couple of weeks out and I'll be in the same pain cave as you are, but I'm excited Genuinely.
Ben:I am Like I think there will be the mental barrier for you to be that light, and I know that sounds ridiculous given where you came from originally. But you know, whenever you go up to the sort of 230, 240 range that you were and then cut right back down, um, there's a lot of mental barriers to to overcome. For me, it's whenever I go below probably about 90 kilos, which I probably will see this year, which is probably about 180 something, 190, some pounds um, so, yeah, there's a big mental like, well, what the fuck? But you do obviously look your best on the other side of it. Um, I think, plan in place. I'm excited to see what we can do in the next nine to ten weeks yeah, what's crazy?
Dave:because I went from, you know, 250 was my highest and, uh, really, you know, to cut down and just start to drop two pounds a week really became second nature. It's taking a long time to get there. I was actually talking to my good buddy, jason Best, and he's in a bulking phase right now and he's loving all this stuff. And he's like, well, I'm loving the strength, I'm loving the energy. He's like I'm not gaining that much amount of fat, body fat. I'm strong as hell. And he's like I'm, you know, I'm loving the strength, I'm loving the energy, you know. He's like I'm not gaining that much amount of fat, body fat. I mean, I'm strong as hell. And he's like, when should I cut the bulk? And I'm like, well, never no-transcript.
Ben:You need to push past that discomfort because it happens quite early on.
Dave:But the first time you're going through it you got to prove to yourself that, hey, I'm not letting myself get out of control, I'm not letting myself get into this same cyclical effect as I did before and pushing the barriers down again to let you know that you, hey, I can cut this off anytime I want to. Yeah, like, this time around was by far the the most I've ever taken. You know, a balking cycle to uh, at 250, and then to come back down to 225, you know, and then down to 215. You know it's going to be crazy. That's a 25-pound difference and then it's going to be a 35-pound difference.
Dave:When it's all said and done, those are some drastic swings back and forth of what we're able to accomplish and again it just really came second nature. I will say it's funny because the bulking phase you feel big right at first, but then when you get to the end of it, you're like, man, I feel like I'm not that big, I feel like I'm small and I'm just overweight and I don't have it. And then you rip the, rip all the fat off. You're like, damn, I'm big again, you know, like. But but then once I get down to like the 250, you're like damn, I'm small again.
Dave:It's like yeah yeah, yeah, yeah it's so weird it's the weirdest shit, that. It's the weirdest mind f that I I go through. It's like, once I get on 215, I'm gonna be like man, I need to balk again. You know like. You know it's gonna be. It's just, it's just perpetual. You know hell that we live in and this is bodybuilding. You know uh side of the house that just kills us.
Ben:So yeah, I mean they're not big enough or I'm not lean enough all the time at all times and, yeah, both of those things.
Ben:But no, I think it's good and, like I think you know, I would say in terms of overall body composition I don't know if you've got a check recently but it might be worthwhile doing like I I would say we've probably been at this point before, right now that you have been this lean, that you are right now, um, so I think I would agree with me or disagree, but I think probably pretty easy to get to this point too far once you sort of make that, that mental shift, um, but the real challenge comes, like getting those last 10 pounds off.
Ben:Like it becomes a real, it becomes actually difficult, um, I think you know for anybody's listening that it's. I know that you know what you're getting yourself in for, um, but you do have to weigh up the the sort of is it worth it to push that, that a little bit further? And because it does become a lot more difficult the less that you have to take off, because if you're looking at 0.5 percent of your body weight, obviously that percentage gets smaller the lighter you are and it also gets more difficult to to take off. But I have no doubt that we'll do it and I'm excited for the the update in nine to 10 weeks time.
Dave:Yeah, Same here. I can't wait. So I got. I got a couple of topics I wanted to bring up today, news today. What's the big news? We'll do the creatine news. Oh, that would be the second one. I don't want you. Oh man, okay, we'll do. We'll do creatine first. I can't believe. All right, I was gonna do creatine second. I was gonna do creatine second.
Ben:I did a whole. I did a whole call today, about two hours ago, um on supplements and talked about creatine for like 10 minutes, and now I'm gonna have to be like see everything that I just said. They just told it's not wrong. So listen.
Dave:Here's what I want to try to accomplish from today's discussion, because I think it's important. You always get asked what supplements can I use to get bigger and stronger? What things can I do to hack the system to get greater gains and fitness goals right? And those are always the things like eccentric movements, going to failure, time under tension. We hear these things, all the things like eccentric movements, um, you know, uh, going to failure, time under tension. We, we hear these things all the time.
Dave:And we hear, you know, some of the staple supplements like fish oil. Well, you know, I did, I think we did like six podcasts in the fish oil issues with cardiovascular potential risk from that, right. And then longevity benefits of that you know it's like, hey, fish oil, you know, lets you live longer and has this all longevity stuff. Then all of a sudden you say like, well, hey, now you have a higher risk of cardiovascular risk. And so there's all of these studies that continuously come out and each one seems to contradict each other, because control studies are very, very difficult to do in humans and it doesn't always parlay over from like worms to you know, mice to you know, you know, to the human body, and things like that. And so once they get into when we say longer term, we're talking maybe six months is a typical range that you can maybe keep people in a certain type of confinement to be able to do a control state, that's valuable, or six weeks. So it's very difficult for the research community to be locked into one specific thing, but one of those things that was always a staple, that has had so much research behind it that everybody has considered to be kind of the gold standard, is creatine.
Dave:And here's the thing I want to say about supplements. If you look at the bodybuilders of old Arnold and those guys and everything, yes, steroids played a part in that, but all they did was they picked up heavy things and they put the heavy things down and they did that until they couldn't do it anymore. That's about as simple as it gets. And just, you know, I watched a video with michael hearn, who is a famous bodybuilder. He's in his 50s and he looks like he looks incredible. He looks like the most amazing chiseled roman god that you could possibly imagine. Right, this guy is like the most handsome mother effer I've ever seen in my life. He's in his 50s, right? You know, son of a bitch. You know, lucky, lucky son of a bitch but so you're not.
Ben:You still have a few years to get there.
Dave:You know I've got a few years to get there. I can get to michael hearn level, but but uh, you know the the funny part about but what michael hearn had come up and he said he's like listen, one thing that I was taught from, from the greats the old, the old greats was just keeping it simple. You just lift until you can't lift anymore, you let your body recover, you get appropriate sleep and you get enough protein. He's like if you're doing those things, you're doing 99% of what you need to do, what's going to make it, and nothing else is really going to help that. Now, when we talk about supplementation, there's things that your body may need that can help you recover faster, to maybe grow a little bit faster, to help you sleep better. That might give you better longevity benefits right. But at the end of the day, nothing is going to replace the intensity and the consistency you have to have in the gym to get the results that you want. Now, creatine is no exception. Creatine has shown in the older data studies to be highly beneficial in three main areas, right Recovery, so your muscle's ability to recover faster. Brain development believe it or not is a huge one. Now that's also being contradicted, but I'll talk about that in a second. And then the third one is the muscle volume and size, so the ability to grow more additional muscle than if you were not taking creatine. Now there's a new data study that just came out and I'm going to read it for you, and then we'll discuss this a little bit.
Dave:So new research led by UNSW has found that taking popular sports supplement creatine does not lead to faster muscle growth when combined with resistance training. In a randomized controlled trial published by Nutrients, 54 participants completed a 12-week supervised resistance training program. Half of the participants took creatine at the recommended dosages, which is five grams, and the other half did not take the supplement. At the end of the program, both groups gained an average of two kilograms of lean body mass, with no significant difference between those who took creatine and those who didn't. We've shown that taking 5 grams of creatine supplementation per day does not make any difference to the amount of lean muscle mass people put on while resistance training, said senior author Dr Mandy Hackstrom. The benefits of creatine may have been overstated in the past due to methodological problems with previous studies.
Dave:Creatine is a naturally occurring compound that supplies energy to muscles. It is produced by the liver, pancreas and kidney and found in protein-rich foods. Previous research shows creatine supplements help build muscle, enhance athletic performance and may even give cognitive benefits. However, previous trials have started supplementation and exercise programs on the same day, making it difficult to separate the effect of muscle gains. Dr hackstrom said they've also overlooked the potential for creatine to cause water retention, though more researchers needed to confirm this.
Dave:So in this trial, those in the supplemented group started on creatine one week before the exercise program began taking five grams per day, which is at the upper end of the recommended maintenance dose of three, three to five grams. We we had what we call a wash-in phase, where half of the participants started taking the supplement without changing anything else in their daily life to give their body a chance to stabilize in terms of response. So what that means is in this latest data study is creatine may not be the holy grail of what we thought it was, or it may be, we don't know but the latest data study is showing that it doesn't have any additional benefit for muscle growth in the time periods that they specifically stated. Now there was also another data study that showed that taking five grams of creatine a day did not help for brain development or growth. You needed to take upwards of 10 grams of creatine a day to get the brain development benefits.
Ben:So we spoke about this last night on the call. Uh, interestingly enough, because um randy asked in the chat how much creatine people were taking and I have fallen into the do the uh, overload, overload gummies that I got you the creatine gummies. So three of those gummies is five grams and I've also been just taking my normal five grams. So, by default of just liking the flavor of the gummies, I've been taking like 10 or 11 grams anyway. So we started that conversation and Justin brought this up in terms of to get the cognitive benefits of creatine you do need those upper ranges of 10 plus grams, which I find I find interesting because I was taking it by accident yeah, and and.
Dave:So that that's what this research study basically says is. The trial suggests people need to take more creatine than commonly thought to get the desired benefits for industrial muscle gain. Experts say just how much will need to be the subject of further research, but 10 grams could be the dose to test first. So you know what it's. What it's basically stating is we don't know. We don't know shit what we thought was the proper dosages. We don't know shit. So it's always interesting.
Dave:I love this field because it's always moving. It's always changing the methods of things that people use, and this is where I get a little bit critical. So I used to get really down into, like the science of everything and I still do to try to understand like, hey, what I could do better. Maybe you're planning differently and like there's like folks like jeff nipper, who I really respect a lot. You know, a natural bodybuilder has a lot of great content that comes out. He's one of my favorite ones to watch. Um, you know there's a lot, you know, uh, the rp guys are great, you know. Um, like great stuff coming out from them, but what I tend to find is that it's all overloading you and keeping things as simple as possible for you to be able to make your goals and establish them, get the best stretch for this specific exercise. Listen, fuck that. Like, like, seriously, like that is the the stupidest stuff I've ever seen in my entire life. Like find a movement that you can feel that muscle working and just blow the shit out of that muscle until you can't do it anymore, and and and so I just I saw another thing with nippert yesterday, and this again.
Dave:This is why, again, I love, I love him. He's a great, you know, but this is where people get confused. So it was like a true and false, like is this a fact or fiction? And there was a bodybuilder there and he said uh, nippert's question was do you take your muscles to failure to get the most amount of growth from that muscle? True or false? And the guy said, well, it's true and it's true. He's like no, it's actually false. He's like you want to only get yourself to have maybe one or two reserves in the bank and that's optimal for the muscle growth.
Dave:I'm like who the fuck is going to get to one or two reserves in the bank and know what that feels like? You know that I only have one left. I truly only have one left to failure. That's going to be my barometer of what I'm actually gonna go to. No, go to failure. Until you can't go anymore, go again some more, because, trust me, your failure is not really failure. And that's where you start to see the the benefits.
Dave:Just keep it simple, like, even if you don't take a journal log, journal logs are great to be able to see, like, the volume that you've done and keep pushing it up. But if you're not doing that, just keep going until you can't go anymore. And then, like I always use the range of like. Let's just say I'm doing bicep curls and you know I, I, I start off at 25 pounds on each arm and I can get up to 12 on those. Okay, well, hey, I need to go heavier. So I'm gonna go up to 35s, because if I got 12 of those, I'm hoping to get to maybe seven to eight of those. Or maybe I'll go up to 30 and I want to get to seven to eight, eight of those. And so I stay at that seven to eight range until I can get to nine or 10 or 11 or 12. And then I move up again and wait.
Dave:It's just a simple stacking the weights to get to a certain rep range. And if you're in the, what we've seen from the data studies again, those could only be shit tomorrow. But you know, anywhere between the three to four rep range, all the way to the 25 to 35 rep range, stimulates muscle growth, stimulates hypertrophy in the same fashion. So it doesn't matter if you're doing 35 or seven or eight or three, one or two, maybe not so much. You might be getting more of the fast switch. Muscle strength benefits from that if you're doing more in the power lifting. But the muscle hypertrophy growth stuff, that rep range doesn't make a difference if you're going into failure with those muscles. So if you're failing at 35, cool. If you're failing at 15, cool. If you're failing at eight, cool. You know.
Dave:If you're doing 12 and you're stopping at 12 because you know 12's a magic number, don't do that. Keep going until you can't lift it anymore and then go up in weight again so that you can do less of those until you can build up more strength. It's just a very simple recipe that we're making it super complex with. That is just really messing up all these people and their goals and their gains, because we're like hey, science says we have to extend our left arm this way and focus this way with a stretch that makes this muscle movement completely insane for somebody to do that, starting off as a beginner. And then we have to figure out. We have one reserve in the tank, you know. Let's figure out what that feels like for you know. Like no, listen, just lift until you can't lift anymore. That's about it. That's all you gotta do.
Dave:You're good, you get a certain amount of set ranges I agree.
Ben:I agree and I have two, two points to add. Number one uh, if you think about optimal, that the science-based community does talk about an optimal range and optimal whatever else I understand that because I've been in that position before. Like maybe seven, eight years ago, whenever I used to coach with Callum, there was a big movement in terms of like banding exercises and like getting the optimal this and that from everything else, and I was so in it. I was like this is so fucking cool, you can make this better. You'll feel it in a different way and you get this. This is so fucking cool, you can make this better, you'll feel it in a different way and you get this, this and this.
Ben:Then my sessions just became a fucking pain in the ass because I was trying to put a thick resistance band around the leg press and you're like stretching it like a mile away and I'm like I'm going to end up in the next, fucking next room. So I think it does have its place in those instances. I think I find it interesting. Interesting because I thought it was like an evolution of of my knowledge and an evolution of training, and I do think it fits in some instances I put a video up um this week on banding the smith machine, because I do think that that is something that works, but it's like almost over correcting that. Everything's fucking banded and you've got a dumbbell wrapped around your head because it taught them all, because the fucking instagram said so.
Ben:On the flip side of it, I think you know, yes, when I am a fan of training to failure, I think if you're at that stage where you're a beginner and you don't really actually know what training to failure feels like, if you have a log and every single week in that log you either add reps to the exercise you're doing or you add weight to the exercise you're doing, you will make progress. Like that is progress. You will reach what will be your upper ceiling in that and that's whenever you start to have to look at maybe other exercises or changing your training block or whatever it might be. But on a simplest form, just doing that will ensure that you make progress.
Ben:Obviously, if you're training to feel you have an understanding you're slightly older in your training age you can progress a little bit differently because you understand what actually training to failure feels like and you get an understanding of okay, right, I know what I'm going into this mentally, I'm comfortable with the movement, I know what it feels like, I know when I actually should stop and I'm not going to fucking kill myself, um, so I think, yes, this is where it gets confusing, because people are reading things on the internet and everything's contradicting everybody and they're like, well, this guy says this and this guy says this. This is the biggest guy, so I'm going to listen to him because he obviously knows what he's talking about yeah, and that's, that's what it's become.
Dave:And that's what. If you look at all these, it gets really confusing. So we were like, hey, you need to do it this way, you do it this way. If you just change your thumbs this way, you do it this way, just lift the lift until you can't lift anymore. And failure is basically just lifting your muscles until it's not able to lift anymore. That's as simple as it possibly can be. If you're doing bicepp curls, can you actually curl that last rep? And I'm not saying mentally, can you curl that rep, can you physically not curl that rep? And then if you got, you've done that, then you've gone to failure. That's a great failure set, right, and even doing partials, partial reps, are fantastic as well. So if you, if you can't get all the way up and you're going halfway, fantastic you're, you're bleeding out the last amount of glycogen in those muscles. You're getting that muscle failure going. That's, that's, that's a great, great set.
Dave:And so on that subject of of researchers and everything else, we've always been taught eccentric is superior to concentric. For building muscles, this is where things like tempo come into play, right? So you usually see like hey, one second up, pause for one second, three seconds down. Pause one second, one second up. You know again, you know rinse and repeat. And we do that eccentric movement, a controlled fashion, to allow more time, time under tension, uh, to have more control for building muscle. And that eccentric movement makes sense because our eccentric component, with the downward motion of something, is actually a much stronger, uh movement for us. We can hold, hold things downward for a much longer time than we can moving upward. It's just how our muscles contract and expand. So the thought pattern and the data studies have shown previously that eccentric motion was superior to concentric motion, which is the upward motion, right? Well, let's challenge that really quick here.
Dave:A recent systematic review and meta-analysis published by the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research in January 2025 compared the effects of eccentric and concentric muscle action on muscle hypertrophy in healthy adults.
Dave:The analysis, which included 26 studies with a total of 682 subjects, found no significant difference in muscle growth between eccentric and concentric training modalities.
Dave:However, the subgroup analysis indicated that eccentric might have a slight advantage in certain contexts, such as upper limb muscles, shorter intervention durations less than eight weeks and specific assessment methodologies, like muscle thickness measurements than eight weeks and specific assessment methodologies, like muscle thickness measurements. So it doesn't appear that eccentric or concentric have any additional massive differences between each other in muscle building growth, which again, to me makes sense. Because, hey, if we're lifting heavy and we're lifting to failure regardless, if you're swinging through it, swinging down, swinging through it, if you can't get up anymore, you're killing those muscles 're you're, you're hitting that muscle the same exact way as you'd be doing it from an eccentric perspective, because you're fatiguing that muscle to the point to where you're hitting those muscle signals to actually grow. I understand the eccentric motion gives you a little bit more time under tension, um, but at the end of the day you're still singing the same amount of volume, so it doesn't really make a huge difference. It doesn't seem to be.
Ben:I think on this, my standpoint on tempo specifically and the reason that I like it, is I find it is more challenging in terms of the movement itself.
Ben:You can lift less weight and people have said this time and time again when they shift from the training they used to do.
Ben:Whenever we move into tempo training, it's a big ego hit because you have to drop the weight quite significantly, because you have to do it for three, four or five times the length of time that you did so.
Ben:For me, it's not necessarily just focused on the time under tension, but it's the quality of the reps, and I've said this a million times over you don't want to just get strong in the movement, you want to get strong in the muscle, like actually be able to be in control of it, and I think tempo allows you to do that, because it allows you to actually have the time spent in each rep to understand what it feels like and, in a roundabout way, because you are using less weight, there's less stress on your body and there's less stress on your joints.
Ben:So from a longevity perspective, I do think tempo still works, whether it's concentric or eccentric. You could have a lot of times when I program something like um, like some sort of roll movement, like lap say, for example, I'll do three seconds on the way down and three seconds on the way up, so they're the same. But it's more just a case of understanding that this part of the movement and this part of the movement need to be slow as shit and you need to actually feel the muscle contract, because you will be limited in the amount of weight that you can move because of the time on it, and that, to me, is a safer option, especially with people starting out and getting to understand how their body moves.
Dave:I fully agree with everything you just said there, because you're controlling the movement, you're understanding the movement itself in exercise, you're not hurting yourself as you're going and doing it, you're not compromising form and integrity as you're going through and doing it, and those are all important things that we want to be able to focus on, for one, feeling that muscle actually be under that tension and actually know what that feels like. And two, the longevity of those lifts as we do this for long term, so that we don't injure ourselves. Fully, fully, fully agree with that and I do think that there's a big. So if you look at the muscle fibers right, the slow twitch and fast twitch fiber, muscle fibers, fast switch, being more of your explosive slow twitch, being more of your endurance slash growth side. You know, to me it makes sense on the slower, controlled side of the house to hit those slow twitch muscle fibers in longer rep ranges, especially for the upper limbs. The upper limbs, so you know, for like biceps, triceps, shoulders, things that you could hit more frequently and often, I think, do much better with with higher volume, higher controlled uh type exercises and movements, as well as um, higher rep ranges, to be perfectly honest. Um, you know, when I do lab raises, I try to blast them with as many of again. If that's 20, then that's cool, um, you know. So you know, I think the, the, the lower muscle uh groups like biceps, triceps, shoulders, things like that's really important.
Dave:But I also, you know, from a controlled perspective on your, your big compound movements, like your chest muscles, things like that, I will always use tempo uh, to me it feels very controlled, it feels very uh good as I'm going through and doing it and I feel a very good stretch in in those those muscles as I'm going through and performing in it. So I think it's important to still maintain control. I'm not saying, you know, hey, slap them on there. But the ones that are like, hey, you need to do a 10 seconds eccentric, you know, push down, because that's going to grow my muscle, that doesn't seem to be the case. You know, what it does do is give you control over that muscle exercise. It allows you to have, you know, that volume that you're able to feel very comfortable with and to continue to move up and feel very good that you're not going to injure yourself as you're going through, as well as build the muscle as you're going and doing it.
Dave:So for me, I'm a huge fan of tempo, you know, I incorporate into every single exercise I do, and I you know it's funny because I can, I can I have like a nagging person in my head that if I do it too fast, I'm like hey, ben's there, you know, he's like slow it down. I'm like shit, you're right, like I gotta, I gotta slow this muscle group. You know this, this workout. I do that all the time. Like, especially like towards the end of the set, I'm like just crank up. I'm like, nope, slow it down. I'm like all right, fine, got it, okay, so it's.
Ben:It's built into my head too I think it's interesting because with the creatine you said it's not shown to build more muscle and with the center movement you also said that it's not shown to build more muscle. I'm wondering what the correlation with strength increases, because we know that it's not necessarily correlated to the muscle you have. Like you can gain strength and not necessarily always gain a significant amount more muscle mass, so I'm wondering what the correlation with that is as well yeah, it didn't it.
Dave:since this is a meta-analysis, it doesn't actually show strength increases. It was purely looking at the measurements of volume of muscle mass added with that. Same with the creatine studies too, by the way. So there might be strength benefits that are coming from that that we don't see as part of those studies itself. And that's the great part about this is it's like a total learning lesson. We're always learning new things for our body, but what still maintains true is if you continue to lift until you can't lift anymore, you're going to grow More volume. You're going to grow. That's basically about as simple as you need to remember. Just continuously move up in strength, continuously move up in volume, continuously move up in weights, you will grow, Whether that's more reps or that's more sets or that's more weights. There's a lot of different ways of doing it, but it's all about just doing more and and your body will grow agree, agree.
Ben:I think to recap on my thoughts on this, based on you have just told me this for the first time and I'm going to continue to take creating same here.
Dave:I think I mean to me doesn't doesn't knock it out of the park with all of the other data studies that we have out there. I really want to see more on this and more uh, more experts kind of weigh in on the study itself, see if there's any flaws in the study, things like that. Um, but I'm definitely gonna be upping my dosages to 10. That's for sure.
Ben:Yeah, and I have, like I said, I I by accident, because I would just take the gummies because they're delicious and then I, out of habit, still take the powder in my shake. So I will still continue to take creatine, probably at 10 grams per day. And in terms of the stuff you were saying about Jeff Knippard and the optimal stuff, I think understanding the level that these people are at and potentially who these are for, like both Jeff Knippard and Dr Mike and Jared and everybody that works in our pre-strength, they are bodybuilders. So like having an understanding of what they're actually trying to do and how specific they have to be in terms of the body parts that they are trying to improve, and like getting into the weeds of like right, well, I want to increase this muscle by this or the shape of this muscle. That is probably whenever you have to start looking at that and ways to improve it. But if're just that, like trying to lose some weight, trying to gain some strength, trying to gain some muscle, you don't need to be so granular in terms of like. I need to band this. I need to stand two meters away, I need to be exactly 2 pm and five miles per hour wind outside for me to get the optimal stretch through my lats on the right side, um.
Ben:So I think understanding like it's cool to absorb the information, but I wouldn't get too too caught up in in like trying to replicate that on yourself, because again, I've done it. I've come back from courses at at M10 and plenty of other courses that I'd be so excited to start fucking banding shit for clients and I used to work on one to one. They were like what the fuck are you done? We're on about with bands around my head and I'd be like Um, which is cool to do sometimes and get an understanding of where you can put a challenge in a slightly different way and there are areas to do it if you're limited in terms of equipment or time or whatever, um, but I don't think it's a. I don't think it's an all the time thing. That's my two cents on both of those things.
Dave:Well, I agree, I'll still use creatine, I'll still use eccentric movements. I think there, and then from there you kind of move from there. And I do like banded exercise, especially when you talk about the band trick you taught me with the bench press being able to make it so that on my right shoulder it's not as high of a load on the lower part of the movement. It has really helped out my shoulders and eventually helped me build it back up to where I don't need those anymore. So bands have their place in in many ways. Uh, doing things differently is a great way. Um, there's also one thing that I was listening to. Rp fitness went uh from, was it dr, dr? Uh, mike mike, dr mike, he's freaking hilarious, um, but he was doing a comparison to alan richardson who plays reacher and uh, it was funny because alan richards Richardson gave his complete workout strategy of how he does things and Dr Mike was critiquing pretty much every comment that he was saying. And the one I thought was really funny was Alan was like hey, I do this exercise, but then I'll do this and do this to confuse the muscle, to confuse the shit out of it so it doesn't know what's going on. And and and Dr Mike's, like your, your muscles don't have a brain. Like it doesn't know that. You're trying to confuse it. Like you just need to hit the muscle and it'll grow. Like that's what you need to do. Like it's like there's not. Like he's actually gave, you know, alan a pretty good, pretty good uh rating for for what he did in his workouts. But uh, there were some funny comments in there that I thought was pretty interesting.
Dave:But you know, again, you hear all these things. You, you take in what you can, you, you learn what works for best for you and you continue to move. For me, I just find you know, keeping it as simple as possible throwing up the weights as much as possible, bringing my muscles out as much as possible, making sure I recover, make sure I get the right amount of sleep, making sure I'm feeling my body the right way, and then I supplement as necessary. That's what works for me. So I'll continue to do that and the results are uncanny. It works. I'll be able to go to 250, to 225, to 215. Next time I'm going to go to 270. Let's see if I can get to 270.
Ben:Let's get this one thing out of the way first. First day that you're on vacation, be texting like right. When can we start into?
Dave:we start. We're gonna start the ball. I'm already. I'm already starting now, so let's go yeah, one thing at a time.
Ben:But, uh, I mean, we'll keep you updated, I guess, on the, the research and the studies and anything else that we think is worthwhile. But, uh, it's good to be back. Uh, dave and I have a conversation like this in the same amount of time that there hasn't been a podcast, so we don't communicate much via our voice outside of this. Just plenty of, uh, passive, aggressive texts towards each other that make no sense to anybody else in the world, and so it's good to be back. We will be back on a more regular basis. We have a lot of cool shit happening for hacking your health and products and coming up all the bits and pieces, so stay tuned for that thanks, everybody take care every time.