If we had to make a checklist guide of how to raise the Stimulus to Fatigue Ratio (SFR) via technique, it might look something like this: • Don’t use any swinging or body language to involve...

Low-income Americans working full-time can't afford to rent a modest apartment in any state

https://youtu.be/6SNOvdjewd8How do you fix low cortisol levels (a.k.a. how do you treat “adrenal fatigue”)?This is a question on the minds of thousands of people every day. The tricky part is that...

"Muscles grow from hard training, but when not training, they don’t shrink very quickly (very little within a week or less) and drop fatigue much faster than they shrink. This means that lower...

THE GREAT TECHNIQUE, INJURY, and PAIN DEBATE! With Jordan Feigenbaum, Michael Ray, and Greg Nuckols. Generously hosted by Omar Isuf and Eric Trexler. I really enjoyed this detailed discussion. Big...

Virpi Mikkonen, from Helsinki, Finland, is an award-winning blogger championing plant-based eating. Yet the vegan diet she was promoting as a route to health was making her sick.

Four years ago, while watching the 2012 Olympic Games, I noticed a lot of athletes wearing colored strips in various patterns on their body. I discovered that these strips were called kinesiotape,...

We all know Mike by now. Alex has been on at episode 172 and had some interesting ideas about methodologies for hypertrophy. That's why we got both on to dis...

A reason why higher frequency training periods work especially well for lagging muscle groups is fiber type. Lagging muscle groups will very likely often be of a slower fiber type average than...

There are three top candidate mechanisms of muscle growth: Tension Metabolites Cell Swelling The exact combination of stimuli to achieve best growth, or their potential sequencing, is not yet...

Netflix film “The Game Changers” started a heated debate about protein, meat and veganism. These topics have always divided people into different camps, but ...

"We’ve already discussed the mind-muscle connection in theoretical terms earlier in the chapter, but now it’s time to make its detection and estimation a bit more practical. In general, the...

Dr. Mike Israetel is a Ph.D. in Sport Physiology, and training and nutrition expert, BJJ purple belt, competitive bodybuilder, as well as co-founder of one o...

In my view, the most essential determinant of whether you are a beginner or an intermediate in hypertrophy training is how easily your results come. If you can fuck around a lot and still get great...

His inspirational story of how Renaissance Periodization helped him lose over 100 pounds.

How much volume should you do? That’s perhaps the most important question to ask in any training program. A new study gives us answers.   40 Reasonably trained women with ~3 years of serious training...

Training volume and frequency are currently hotly debated. For good reason, as these are fundamentally important considerations for the design of a training program. Over the last year, several...

Cody started as a highly successful personal trainer but desired more knowledge.So he went down the route of further education which eventually led to a PhD ...

A new study lends pretty solid support to two of my more iconoclastic positions about squatting. Read this article to get the full story.

The Fat Activism movement is risking lives by suppressing research on obesity

The authors of the "extreme volume study" break down their findings and the real-world application, and respond to critiques of the original paper.

Three quick quad training tips: 1.) For the first 5 years of your training to get the biggest quads as possible, it pays to focus on increasing your multi-set 5-10RMs in the: - High bar squat - Leg...

"It might only take a minute to go from 50% re-sensitization of anabolic pathways to 90% re-sensitization after an average set, but it might take another 2 minutes to go from 90% to 95% and another...

The caption says that squats with 675lbs were done in this video, but that's inaccurate. There were zero squats done in this video. Coach education matters, and is lacking in many places. When you...

We are thrilled to have Dr. Mel Davis, creator of RP's vegan diet templates, with us again in this episode.  We get to discuss ALL of the major buzz-worthy scenes from the The Game Changers documen...

There's a lot of debate about the effects of training frequency for strength gains. However, the data are surprisingly clear. We've got the scoop here.

Rest times for straight sets can vary greatly, but can actually all be autoregulated with one simple rule. The rule is “when your breathing returns mostly to normal, you can do another set.” The...

Updating the Renaissance Periodization muscle group training guides, and each one is up to about 17 pages already. Here's the training modality entry for back training (each muscle group has its...

Should you add cardio or reduce food when cutting? "Too much cardio is going to burn muscle, but so is not enough food. It’s difficult to say where the balance lies, but the answer is again...

An informal poll

There are two main considerations for determining training frequency. The first is the duration of the increase in muscle growth seen after a bout of training between MEV and MRV. If such an increa...

"The maximum adaptive volume of a single session of any trained muscle group is still speculative, but research suggests it’s probably no lower than 4 working sets per session and no higher than 12...

How many SETS and REPS per week is best for hypertrophy? How HARD should you train? Train to FAILURE? How do you track volume? Dr. Mike Israetel, Phd and I t...

An interesting proxy for the amount of muscle you're growing over the course of a mesocycle of hypertrophy training is: (The amount of total volume (in hard sets) you have done) x (The percent of...

"Counting the number of hard sets might be an even greater proxy for growth than counting the number of effective reps for a few other reasons. On the one hand, a set of 30 to failure’s last 5 reps...

SFR and Volume (note: SFR stand for "Stimulus to Fatigue Ratio") When we examine the relationship between total program volume (let’s say, in sets per session or sessions per week), we notice that...

The idea that the last 5 reps before failure are "effective reps" doesn't actually have much all that experimental support.

Dr Mike Israetel Training Advice : in this video I ask Mike's thoughts on RPT (Reverse Pyramid Training).How do you know:1.) Whether or not down sets are nee...

It is finally here! Lyle & Mike get into a highly anticipated debate about the '45 Set Study' by Brad Schoenfeld. Furthermore, they get into a discussion abo...

Transitioning successfully from fat loss to muscle gain: 1.) The Cravings Problem When you’re done with a long fat loss phase, you’re both hungry and cravey. Hungry just means you want more food,...

Over-Application of Variation Over-application of variation is very common for several reasons. First, because novelty (via resensitization and lack of staleness) does have an element of...

Eating animal products as 100 percent of your food intake might not be quite as harmful as it sounds, but these PhDs would stil prefer you not do it.

Is planning to fail a failure to plan? We get the definitive facts from one of the world’s foremost experts so you can apply cutting-edge science to your workouts today. Is failure an option? Failure...

Exercise selection during deloading. There are three primary approaches which have their upsides and downsides and can be blended to various extents. Using the past accumulation phase’s exercises...

An important final note on gender and training frequency is the implication that, not only do females benefit more from higher frequencies than males, but, that they actually are more disadvantaged...

Mike Israetel explains his standpoint on Natural vs Enhanced Training, as well as Natural vs Enhanced Nutrition.#NattyVsEnancedTraining #theliftingdermatolog...

No matter what kind of artist you are - a photographer, painter, illustrator or any other - there will always be people who think they are entitled to free art. "Do it for exposure", "You're good, it...

If we assume that most training should occur within 5 RIR or less (as we’ll see in the next section, this really is the case), heavier training, rep for rep, does actually cause more growth than...

Most of us, at one point or another, have had our body fat levels  

Meal timing, calorie distribution, and feeding windows matter. In this article, Danny Lennon tells us everything we need to know about chrononutrition.

The first way to troubleshoot a lack of muscle growth progress is to make sure that your training, diet, and sleep are CONSISTENT. If you cannot consistently apply a variable, you can have no idea...

6.) Sacrificing Technique for Progression Especially when in a psyched up state, and when RIR is very low, it’s very tempting to let technique slide a bit in order to eek out the last few reps and...

Common opinion has it that modern wheat is so reliant on fertiliser and crop protection agrochemicals that the plants now lack the hardiness needed to remain productive under harsher environmental...

Is eating the most difficult part of bodybuilding? Bodybuilding. It’s all about lifting things up and putting them down again right? At least that’s what a great deal of people believe. They think...

Protein for Muscle Growth: "The actual process of muscle growth can be measured with something called the “Fractional Synthetic Rate” of muscle tissue. This is how much muscle your body (or even...

Using an Excessively Low Frequency Sure, there’s a lot of debate to be had about if 3x per week or 4x per week per muscle group is best. There is uncertainty in whether you should heal both...

This week we cover: - Cunnilingus - Best DBZ Sagas - The Vertical Diet - Kombucha - Four Loco Blackouts - Coming back from injuries and how to train best to do that - James does his ‘nerd voice’...

Then there is the discussion of exercise selection during deloading. There are three primary approaches which have their upsides and downsides and can be blended to various extents. - Using the...

The ketogenic diet is one in which the carbohydrate intake must be driven low enough, and consistently so, to allow the body to enter into ketosis. Ketosis is a process through which the body's...

Experimenting with training all main muscle groups 3x a week in part due to @weightology’s latest hypertrophy review update. Wednesday AM Heavy Quads, Moderate Hams, Heavy Chest Hack squats...

The Upsides and Downsides of Rack Pulls for Muscle Growth For strength training (especially for powerlifting competition), rack pulls are a potentially very simple and easy tool to use to improve...

Excellent write up! Summary: keto probably not best for sparing muscle.

But load progression might not be enough to supply all of the progression in tension stimulus that we need over the course of a mesocycle. In reality, our sensitivity to volume adapts, in many...

Muscle Soreness and Growth: If you’re not getting any stiffness or relative weakness at all after your training session, the session may be insufficiently disruptive for best gains to occur. If...

Monounsaturated fats (such as those found in nuts, avocados, olive and canola oils, for example) systematically show up as healthier than most other calories sources in many contexts in the...

We know Mike and at least since Episode 163, you should know Jordan as well.In today's episode, Mike and Jordan go into a discussion about Reps In Reserve, T...

New York state is battling one of the worst measles outbreaks in two decades as the highly contagious disease hits Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn and Rockland County. Fifty-five confirmed...