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TMHS 1023: Try These Exercises For Better Fitness & Fat Loss
If you want to get the best results in the gym, you need to follow realistic science-backed strategies that your muscles and metabolism will actually respond to. On this compilation episode of The Model Health Show, you’re going to learn about the best exercises you can use to get fitter, leaner, and healthier!
You’re going to learn about the fat burning benefits of sprinting, the health benefits of rucking, and the best exercises and strategies for optimal muscle growth. You’ll hear about the neural wiring of strength training, how to train your fast twitch muscle fibers, how to implement drop sets into your training, the importance of optimizing your warmups, and so much more. Our guests range from world champion athletes to elite fitness trainers with decades of experience under their belts.
This episode is full of no-nonsense tips that will help you build muscle as efficiently as possible, drop excess body fat, and get in the best shape of your life. If you’re ready to transform your fitness and see real results from your training, just click play and enjoy the show!
In this episode you’ll discover:
- Why sprinting burns fat more efficiently than endurance training. (6:07)
- How to sprint train for beginners. (12:18)
- What drop sets are and how to add them into your strength training. (20:22)
- The importance of building a strong mind-muscle connection. (23:38)
- How rucking can aid in fat loss. (30:07)
- The science of how weighted walking can influence weight loss maintenance. (34:18)
- How many sets to do per exercise to optimize muscle growth. (41:29)
- What junk volume is. (47:32)
- How to improve your warmups. (48:38)
- What it means to train to failure. (54:54)
- The best way to measure if you’re actually making progress. (57:22)
- The top lower body exercises for building muscle. (1:00:03)
Items mentioned in this episode include:
- Paleovalley.com/model – Shop the Paleovalley Anniversary Sale for up to 35% off snacks and supplements that prioritize nutrient density.
- 10 Surprising Reasons You Need to Start Sprinting – Watch the full interview with Cynthia Monteleone!
- The Truth About Building Muscle – Watch the full interview with Torre Washington!
- Carrying Weight Changes Your Body – Watch the full interview with Michael Easter!
- Build Muscle & Burn Fat Faster Over 40 – Watch the full interview with Jay Ferruggia!
This episode of The Model Health Show is brought to you by Paleovalley.
If you’re serious about real health, it starts with real nutrition. Paleovalley delivers nutrient-dense foods and supplements designed to help you feel stronger, more energized, and fully alive. For a limited time only, get up to 35% off storewide plus a free gift with purchase during the Paleovalley Anniversary Sale at paleovalley.com/model.
Transcript:
SHAWN STEVENSON: Welcome to The Model Health Show. This is a special alert. Summer is not over. We still have time to enjoy the sun and the fun, and to create some real transformation with our health and fitness. And today's episode is going to provide you with four world leading experts sharing their greatest tips, the best exercises for better fitness and better fat loss.
Now, some of these things you might not have even heard of before, and some of these things are tried and true, but they're going to explain it in a way that's going to help it to click so that it sticks. All right, so again, we've got four world leading experts in health and fitness to share some of their greatest insights to help you.
Again, summer is not over. Let's get it. Utilize these incredible strategies and see the benefits show up in your life as predictable as the sun rising every single day Now, something else that's predictable at this time of year is the Paleo Valley anniversary sale. This means 35% off storewide. Plus, you get a free gift with every purchase on top of that, and this means that you get access to my favorite superfood bars for 35% off.
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We got four world-leading experts to provide some of the very best strategies and specific exercises for better fitness and fat loss. And we're going to kick things off with, not only has this individual transformed her body She is now at almost 50 years old achieving a 400 meter world championship as a masters level sprinter and decathlete, running her fastest times.
She's a D1 college athlete running the 400. She's running her fastest times in her 40s. So this isn't just a mere appearance of fitness, this is that real fitness. And in this segment, she's going to share with you why right now utilizing some smart sprinting is one of the fastest ways to put your body into a fat burning state.
She's gonna share how sprinting triggers our bodies to burn more calories after the workout as well, plus some safe, smart, practical ways to add some sprinting into your training. Summer's not over. Let's dive into this first segment with the incredible Cynthia Montelion
CYNTHIA MONTELEONE: It burns fat better than endurance training.
When you think about the average population and say, this is a bone I have to pick. A woman who turns 40 and she thinks, "Okay, I need a goal. I'm gonna train for a marathon." She has no business training for a marathon. I'm like, "Girl, you need to train for the 100 meters instead." Why? Okay. So, they're...
Usually she's trying to lose weight because around that age, even earlier, even age 35, women's hormones are starting this rollercoaster, and so maybe things that she's done before haven't worked anymore. I h- hear this story all the time with my clients. "Well, I used to be able to just grind it off, and now the weight's not moving."
So they think, "I need a bigger goal. I'm gonna train for a marathon." But what happens is that they're running, like, all this mileage slow because they haven't really gotten strong enough to run fast or, you know, they're not in shape. So they're running all this mileage slow trying to lose this body fat, but they're actually...
Their body fat is clinging to them and they're not losing the weight. Maybe they'll lose a few pounds if they're, you know, majorly overweight at first. But sprinting actually has a better EPOC. You know EPOC, yeah? Post exercise oxygen consumption. Yeah. So you're basically... You need to feed your body again longer after sprinting.
But that, but also the rise in catecholamines, so adrenaline noradrenaline, all of these catecholamines linger a long time- ... after sprinting. Whereas endurance training, it's kinda like endurance training heats up the body like a thermostat just during that time. But sprinting lights the fire, and that fire keeps burning through the night, if y- you can imagine that for fat loss.
So, I always tell women, "No. Like, train for the 100 meters instead if really that's your goal is to get in great shape Related to that, you have an, a better holding of muscle mass with sprinting. I mean, you can just see that clear as day if you look at a, a marathon runner next to a 100-meter sprinter, right?
So you're having this muscle mass that we all know is beneficial to us for many different reasons as we age. But yeah, so you're gonna be stronger. You're gonna be more able to move better as you age, that sort of thing. You actually want the strength and the power output. And when sprinting is studied and longevity, actually power and longevity is studied, it's found that the neural wiring is what's most important.
So for example, if you have 100 meters of someone running 100 meters they're, they have the strength and the physical capacity to run that full 100 meters at the same pace, but... or at max velocity, but they don't. They slow down, and the question is why? And the answer is, it's actually the neurological timing- Hmm
and rhythm. So training your nerves to keep twitching fast is extremely important as we age. Right. Yes. So what happens is that as we get older, particularly in the research after age 60, our neural wiring starts to break down, unfortunately. So there are ways to keep that going, and sprinting is like the top of the pyramid in ways.
We have these things called NMJ, neuromuscular junctions, and it's where our nerves tell the muscles to contract. It's that, that junction where that happens, and that happens from our brain, and that happens from our spinal cord, and as we age, those signals become disrupted. So if you can imagine it like fiber optics.
When you're young, you got the high speed. You can, you know, go live. You can play your video games really fast and react really fast. Our muscles will react to as fast as we wanna go because our, our brain's sending the signal. Our- ... spinal cord's sending the signal, and our muscles are like, "Yes, we're fast.
Go, go, go." As we age past 60 especially these NMJs are not getting the signal as well, and they're breaking down, and sometimes other nerves are, like, having to do the job of the ones that are breaking down. And so Researchers looked at what are the things that keep these NMJs firing well? What are the things that are, that keep producing output?
What are the things that keep producing fast twitch? Which, why is that important as we age? Well, it prevents falls. You know, it keeps people safe. It all the things we need as we age. Keeps, keeps us young biologically. Mm. So yeah, they found that sprinting was actually the top of the pyramid. Yeah.
The number one thing. Because anything our body has to do to use maximal effort and coordinate is the, the peak of it, we'll say. Mm.
SHAWN STEVENSON: I wanna dig in a little bit more with the, these fast twitch fibers. So we got slow twitch fibers- ... on the other end. And then we got some intermediary-
CYNTHIA MONTELEONE: Right ...
SHAWN STEVENSON: as well. But these fast twitch fibers are really important, not for just the, the longevity benefits, but also the potential for, like, our metabolic health too, 'cause they're tied to so many more motor units.
Exactly. Like, so when we're r- when we're sprinting and working hard, we're fi- like, we're creating a cascade, an amplification effect for our bodies. And you mentioned that EPOC, and so what we're doing is we're not just, like, quote, "burning fat" during the workout, but, like, we're kind of t- blocking our body from storing more fat over the course of the day.
Like, we're changing the way that our body's operating by engaging in a sprint. And so I wanna ask you how, because you've worked with people in the real world on this, how do you get people to go from not sprinting or being afraid of sprinting to start to incorporate and to add some fast movement into their lives?
CYNTHIA MONTELEONE: Yes. I'm so glad that we got to this because we want the action, right? We want to be able to share what is the path to get to this point. So, what I have people do is I have them actually, if they're very beginners, they start by walking up a hill. Why? Because that forces your foot into dorsiflexion, which is your toe up.
It forces you to drive up the hill, and it, it- that's your sprint position. That's your driving sprint position. So un- o- other than forcing you into the correct position, it gives you resistance to help build your tendons and your muscles needed to sprint, and it's low impact, so that means you're really not gonna get injured by going up the hill.
And as you walk up the hill, and I would say maybe, like, walking maybe 30 seconds up a hill, that, something about that length, and then walking back down. Do it maybe 10 times, and then after that, start to incorporate a little bit of jogging up the hill. And then slowly get faster. The other thing is to strength train for sprinting.
So there are specific movements that will strengthen your muscles for sprinting and prevent injury. Of course, my mentor Charles was a, a strength coaching genius, and I learned all of the protocols from him, and then again, took it and specifically made it better with my experience from clients. But there are certain, like for instance, the split squat.
That is a great exercise for strengthening the tendons in your ankles, creating that tendon stiffness we talked about, 'cause you need to be able to spring back. And that's just one of many- So- ... for example.
SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah ... would you say, like, the two foot on the ground split squat or a Bulgarian split squat with one foot up?
CYNTHIA MONTELEONE: Definitely knees over toes style, and if anyone's familiar with knees over toes guy, he, you know, is the first one to say he learned everything from Charles. So he, he basically is, has rebranded Charles as ACL Protocol. So it's good information, it works. But yeah, that like a knees over toes style escalator forward, not elevator- Right
up and down. Got it. The Bulgarian you can target the quad or the glute depending on what you're doing, and glutes are important for sprinting, so don't neglect those. But this is more about the stability needed to control that movement- Mm ... and using eccentrics. So a lot of... I'll tell you, this is... You'll find this fascinating.
Between age 40 and 43, when I won that race and ran that fast, I did zero Olympic lifts, which are very popular for track and field athletes. I wasn't ready to do those Olympic lifts. I had a great strength coach as well, who was one of Charles' students, Malcolm William. But basically when you're doing eccentric movement, so eccentric is the lowering portion, doing it with a tempo of four to six seconds, say.
You're controlling the movement, and you're recruiting more muscle fibers, especially fast twitch. A lot of people think, "Oh, I need to move if I move fast, then I'll get fast twitch." But actually, the slow eccentric is what's gonna build your muscle and recruit those fibers. A lot of people don't know that.
Yeah. So move- It's a
SHAWN STEVENSON: recruitment-
CYNTHIA MONTELEONE: Yeah ...
SHAWN STEVENSON: sequence.
CYNTHIA MONTELEONE: Right. Move slow to be fast is what I say. So things with... So the, let's just say the split squat, maybe a four second down hold for one at the bottom and a one second up. You can manipulate that according to time under tension and your goal and all that stuff.
We don't have to get into all that detail, but that's just one example of a great strength exercise. My dad, 82, I had him doing Poliquin step-ups off of his outdoor step. He did, he lifted weights. He did shoulder press movements- So what is that step-up? ... bicep curls.
SHAWN STEVENSON: Is this a step-up on like a-
CYNTHIA MONTELEONE: Okay ...
SHAWN STEVENSON: an apparatus?
Are you using something?
CYNTHIA MONTELEONE: You have a heel elevation. So if people don't have a slant board, then you would use maybe a couple, stack a couple plates or something like that. My dad did it. He had just like a block of wood that he propped up on and he held onto the railing of the stairs at first until he was strong enough, which is a great progression.
And this targets the VMO, which is your vastus medialis oblique of your quad. It's right above your knee and it protects your knee from taking all the stress of sprinting. So it's like one of the number one exercises you should do. So
SHAWN STEVENSON: it's kind of like going down a stair-
CYNTHIA MONTELEONE: Yes ... a little bit. Correct.
Yeah. Yep. Got it. And that one's really important. Deadlifts, of course, Romanian deadlifts with a slow eccentric and that actually is one of the number one exercises it turns out for neural firing as well, is a slow Romanian deadlift with b- you can just do dumbbells. So these begin- we're talking about beginners, right?
So those are some great places to start. And then after, like for instance, we'll talk about my dad 'cause he's 82, right? So he did his hills in his driveway And then he did some down the street. He didn't even go to a track. Sometimes he went to a track for a time trial, but he just did he would walk for maybe 45 minutes and intermittently sprint for 10, 20 meters until he became comfortable.
Got faster as time went on. Grass sprinting is great to keep the tension off the joints. But yeah, I have many different protocols for beginners that depending on what level they are, but anyone can learn. But what about, say, like me right now? We talked earlier, I have no ACL . Pole vault. I was pole vaulting and fell straight down violently and shredded my knee.
So that was about six months ago. So right now I'm not sprinting at the moment, but I am still sprinting because I'm on the assault bike. So assault bike, bike especially, you're using your total body for that momentum. So if you said, "Oh, I can't run, and my joints this, and my knee's that," well, you can get on a stationary bike and you can do intervals.
This is good. If, if you can do the assault bike with the upper body, that's better, but anyone can sprint on a stationary bike or rower or that sort of thing. So you can also start there. That's a great place for beginners to start. And not every day. I really have to stress that. I see some... I try not to get too upset about it, but like sometimes I see influencers out there and they have no idea what they're talking about.
They don't have sprinting experience. They just know that sprinting is trendy right now, and they say, "Oh, I sprint every day. I sprint 100 meters times whatever every day." And this is incorrect. Like, do not sprint every day, okay? Three days a week is plenty. I like to prescribe a tempo day, a fast day, and a kinda mixed race model type day.
That way you're hitting different energy systems. Because let's think about it like weightlifting. You're not gonna just max out on bench every single day, right? Like if you go to the gym, you're not like, "Okay, I'm maxing today." And then you go to the gym the next day and you're like, "I'm maxing today, too."
And then you go the next day, "I'm maxing today, too." Like, that's not how you do it. You do reps in different rep ranges for different purposes like hypertrophy or strength or endurance, that sort of thing, depending on your sports goal or your fitness goal. But you're not maxing it every day. So you don't wanna do that with sprints either.
The tempo helps with that. Tempo means you're going about 85 to 95% for multiple reps with a little bit less rest. Then the second day would be a little bit shorter, faster, more rest. And the third day, maybe you're combining a little bit of the two and going for, you know, like a peak performance type thing.
SHAWN STEVENSON: All right, I hope that you enjoyed that first segment. We've got so much more in store for you. Up next, you're gonna hear from an all-natural IFBB professional bodybuilding champion And he's got a quick-hitting tip for you. If you're looking for a change-up in the gym, you can utilize this strength training technique that boosts fat loss and muscle gain through a process of muscle fiber recruitment.
Let's dig into this next segment with the incredible Torre Washington. Give me some secret sauce here of like something that you would like utilize.
TORRE WASHINGTON: You know, so I like failure a lot, going to failure. And drop sets I think very, are very effective because drop sets, you know, a lot of times people ask the questions.
And I'll be honest, sometimes when I'm training people, don't ask no questions. Let's just work. And because I just want them to get the work done. And but then they're like, "Why are we doing that?" But you know, when it comes to drop set, you know, it's fatiguing the muscle and every fiber, the, all the fibers.
SHAWN STEVENSON: Share what drop sets are.
TORRE WASHINGTON: So a drop set is, let's say you start very heavy. For example, let's say you're doing bench press and you're doing 315, right? And you're doing 315 and you can only max out six reps. And maybe the sixth rep you're having a slight, you know, spotter to help you. And so that's, you've just fatigued the mus- the major muscle group 'cause that big muscle had to come into play to help you.
Of course, you have your ex ce- auxiliary muscles helping with your shoulders and your triceps and, and your back to a certain extent. So you get that weight to six reps. You rack it. You take off. Sometimes you can take off 10% or more, and then you go and do as many reps as you can higher than what you just did.
So if you just did six, your goal is to go from eight to 10. And so then you get that eight to 10, you drop the weight again. 10 to 12, you drop the weight again. 15 to 20, you drop the weight again, and you go as many as you can. And what you're doing is you're fatiguing every muscle fiber to the last point of failure, and you have really just trained that muscle All around.
And I think a lot of times you see it, especially with people that are working out to that capacity, you can see it in their development. Because you see the difference between someone who's just powerlifting and someone who's really paying attention to their design, the sculpting of the body. They look different.
You know, a powerlifter will just be big and massive and are strong. But a bodybuilder, we're not powerlifting, we're sculpting our physique to make sure every sinew, every tendon, every fiber is so, is able to be visible to the naked eye when you're on that stage.
SHAWN STEVENSON: That's great, man. So with the drop set, and when you mentioned we're hitting all these different muscle fibers, so of course people know the general slow twitch fibers- Yeah
the fast twitch fibers. But we have a range of intermediate fibers as well. So you're, you're tagging all of these boys. It's basically recruitment.
TORRE WASHINGTON: Correct.
SHAWN STEVENSON: It's strategic recruitment, and it's a very efficient but very difficult- Yes ... in the mindset piece. You know, you've said this a couple of times, in the intensity, right?
And even you said, you opened this up by saying, "I like failure," right? And that's something that we shy away from in all areas-
TORRE WASHINGTON: Yeah, I know ... of our lives. I know. Right? You're right.
SHAWN STEVENSON: And so it's symbolic but, you know, we have the reps in reserve paradigm, but also going past that to where your muscle actually is just like, this can be a great catalyst for growth.
But you've gotta be mindful of what's right for you-
TORRE WASHINGTON: Right ...
SHAWN STEVENSON: And also your recovery.
TORRE WASHINGTON: Right.
SHAWN STEVENSON: Right? So all of these pieces, you know, it's an equation. You know? But the best way to find out what's gonna work for you is to give it a try.
TORRE WASHINGTON: Yep. I'm very much into sculpting people. I like to work with people who already have an idea of how to lift.
They just need that extra tweak. They need that control, because a lot of times people just lift mindless, not mindful. And I like to be connected to my muscle when I'm training, and I think a lot of times we talk about, we hear mind-muscle connection, but a lot of people really don't understand how to really control that.
And so when I'm working with people, I want them to understand that concept, like, seriously. Because it's so important when you connect with that muscle, you can develop it more. Because it's just like Manifesting your thoughts, you know? So you can manifest that muscle to grow by connecting with it because it's, it's you.
It's part of your body. And so I train now at a split more of, I do legs about twice a week because of, I'm in men's physique. Men's physique is really, was, in the beginning, it really was nothing about legs. And so that's why they could wear, they could get away with board shorts. It was more of a beach body look, and I didn't like it because I started out bodybuilding with the, they call it the banana hammocks or however you wanna call it.
Some people call it man panty. And so I started out there, you know, and, and I love the art form of posing and really presenting your physique in the best light, showing all your strengths, hiding your weaknesses, 'cause it's all an illusion. It's just how you present it, you know? You could have a better physique than me, but if I know how to present mine better, I beat you- because I know how to showcase it all, showcase it better than you do. And that's why it's such an art form that I think people don't recognize. And a lot of times the guys on stage don't even know it. They don't even know how to... I'm looking at them like, "Man, you have such a great physique. You're just not presenting it well."
And so posing became really a, a part of it, and once this men physique came out, it changed up my training to where now you wanted more recovery to train your shoulders more, your chest more, and your back more 'cause the, and your abs. Because those are the body parts that really create this symmetry that you're looking to have, wide shoulders, small waist, and your legs don't need to be too pronounced But that's changed now.
They now want legs to have some look to it to complete it, because I've always been a, had a physique that was balanced. And so that's how I would win over someone else, because I didn't have a standout body part. I was complete. Everything was symmetrical and proportionate to one another. And so that also happened with my training.
I would train very symmetrically. You know, I would do, let's say if I did back, I would do back and shoulders, you know, with some abs, just because I wanted to get at least two to three body parts in a day to allow myself to do it again sometime later on in the week. Because I know with, when it comes to muscle building and growth, two to three times a week to allow it to grow, especially if it's a lagging body part.
And for me, I always looked at my back as being a lagging body part because I wanted it to have more depth, not width. When I was younger, I wanted it to be very wide so I can jump off a cliff. I used to envision myself jumping off a cliff and just open my lats and gliding. You know? So that's how I was able to get it wide, and it's crazy because people used to be like, "Man, your la- your lats are wide."
But it was all visualization. I was focusing on it and mentally connecting with wanting to be wide. So now I focus on wanting it to be a lot thicker, because in Men's Physique, you only turn around to the back and to the front. You don't do the posing, which I loved in bodybuilding. And but with IFBB, you know, 99.8% of them are using enhance, enhancements, so, and I'm not doing that.
So of course their body's gonna grow muscle, but their protein synthesis is gonna be fa- a lot faster. And so it's gonna take time with me. So now I train back about two to three times a week, and legs two to two, what? Two times a week. I do chest about two times a week. Shoulders, shoulders get hit almost with everything, 'cause you know, you're doing chest and you do back, you're getting your front delts, you're getting your, your rear delts.
Medial, maybe not so much at all, depending on the movement. I do shoulders as much as possible. I train abs about three... I used to train abs every day. Now I do it almost every day. And I do Glutes, which men used to not train glutes because they were like, "Why? We can do that with squats." But now when it comes to bodybuilding, you're very much focused on isolation because you wanna develop that muscle so that it can really pop on stage, you know?
So it has... And it sometimes it evolves, it changes, but it pretty much is very simple, basic movements that I stick to. I don't really go into the fancy training methodologies that are out there because people get bored, and I think they don't recognize that linear progression is where it's at, but they want to do all these cr- you know, crazy things just to stimulate themselves because they don't have the pure love for just the growth of it, you know?
Because in- if you're not training with the intensity you're not gonna really get the results. And I've seen people train where once they work out with me, they're like, "Man, I, I don't do this on my own." And I, I think it's because they may not have as much of a love for it. But when they do get it, they get it, you know?
Because that intensity is what really helps you get the most out of your workout.
SHAWN STEVENSON: Up next in this incredible compilation with these four world-leading experts sharing exercises for better fitness and fat loss. Next, you're gonna hear from New York Times bestselling author and former professor at UNLV, Michael Easter.
He's gonna be sharing how rucking, or urban rucking, that's taken over the streets, can boost calorie burn, improve cardiovascular fitness, and enhance strength, all while staying low impact and accessible. This is the art and science of utilizing a weighted backpack or weighted vest that adds resistance and some incredible benefits that you need to know about.
Let's dive into this segment with the incredible Michael Easter.
MICHAEL EASTER: I think there's a lot of evidence that suggests it's uniquely good for fat loss. Now, w- I think there's a variety of reasons for that, but the simplest way to think about it is you're combining endurance work, which tends to burn more calories than strength work, but you also are working your muscles because you are having to use your muscles to carry the weight.
More or less, right? And something almost happens where that tends to preferentially burn fat for energy. So there's a study that I really love that looked at these backcountry hunters in Alaska. So for those who aren't familiar with backcountry hunting, it's basically like I'm carrying all my gear in a backpack and I'm going into the mountains for 10 days, two weeks, whatever it might be, and I can't really eat that much as I'm doing it 'cause I gotta carry in all my food.
So these scientists send these guys out. They measure their body fat. They do all these different measurements before they go out. These guys are out in the wilderness for 14 days about, and then they come back Now, they had lost weight, right? You would expect that, 'cause they weren't eating that much.
They're covering ground like crazy people with these heavy packs. Now, when most people lose weight, though, some of that weight is gonna come from muscle. Like, if I just start dieting, I'm gonna lose fat, I'm gonna lose muscle. But ideally, you wanna hang on to as much muscle as possible, right? So when they tested these guys' body fat after the 14 days, they found that they had lost entirely fat and no muscle at all.
They'd even slightly gained muscle. It was not a significant amount, but it was there, and that was enough where you're like, "Wow, that's a shocker." I will tell you from my own perspective I did this long backcountry hunt in Alaska in 2019. Just about a year ago, I did this 850-mile through hike in southern Utah.
So I have these heavy backpacks on my back the whole time. I'm covering ground, and in each of those trips, I lost about 15 pounds. But that 15 pounds, it was definitely fat. Now, I didn't do any crazy body fat testing, but I can tell you, I could just take my shirt off and go, "You look like you're ready for weigh-in at a UFC fight right now," you know?
So I think when we do think about l- weight loss of course, as I'm sure you've covered, I think that diet is the number one lever to pull, you know? Doesn't matter how much rucking you do. If you're eating 7,000 calories a day, like, good luck. But as you lower your calories to try and lose weight, the question becomes, all right, well, how do I shift the balance where I'm losing more fat than muscle in this process?
And I think that rucking can be a really good tool for that, because you'll burn more calories than you would just from weightlifting alone, but you'll also get some of that strength stimulus that seems to tell your body to hang on to that muscle.
SHAWN STEVENSON: Amazing. Now, you don't know this. Before I picked up your book, which is amazing, by the way, everybody needs to get a copy I did a show with my guys here, and we released the episode, and it was inspired by the gravitostat- information that came from Dr. Brendan Spiegel out of UCLA. And when I dug into the research, I was just, I, I mean, I was blown away. It's rare that you find something that's just, like, truly, like, a revelation, like nobody knows this. And it was a study that was published in the International Journal of Obesity.
And part of that process, like you said, even you can be cons- 7,000 calories, you're gonna have to run 24/7 or whatever. But part of that struggle that, especially here in the United States, people have experienced, millions upon millions, they lose weight and they gain it back.
Right? Plus a little bit more.
And a big part of that has to do with the change in the resting metabolic rate, right? When you cut away those calories, this goes back and ties in so well with this new book because there's certain things that our body has evolved to do. Your body has evolved to not lose weight.
MICHAEL EASTER: Right.
SHAWN STEVENSON: Right? You know?
MICHAEL EASTER: Exactly. The body's not like that ...
SHAWN STEVENSON: and so having the w- w- our genes are a result of those who survived, who were good at hanging onto weight, right? And so that resting metabolic rate going down to basically just make sure that you survive, right? So, what these researchers did was they took almost 20 people, and they had them to wear a weighted vest.
But what they did was each pound that they lost, and they, b- by the way, put them on a calorie, calorie restricted diet. And one group, no weighted vest, and the other group wearing a weighted vest. But every pound they lost, they added a pound to the weighted vest. And so what this did was, and the, the researchers affirmed this presence of this gravitostat was They did the short-term diet.
They lost weight. The people wearing the weighted vest lost 25 pounds over the course of the study. The study was six months long, and so the weighted vest group lost 25 pounds. The non-weighted vest group lost 23 pounds. Not a big difference. That wouldn't be enough for me to be carrying a weighted vest around for, you know, 10 hours a day as a participant.
But the magic was in the follow-up. Two years later, they bring the participants back in. As expected, the people who were not wearing the weighted vest, they regained the weight that they lost. Now, here's where the magic was. The people who were wearing the weighted vest, they only gained back half of the weight that they lost.
All right? During the study, they found that the people who weren't wearing the weighted vest, their resting metabolic rate went down by about 250 calories a day. Mm. So they were burning 250 less.
The people wearing the weighted vest, their resting metabolic rate only went down 16 calories a day.
MICHAEL EASTER: Yeah.
SHAWN STEVENSON: And so it was something about having that load on their frame that was kind of informing their biology that they don't need to slow that mes- resting metabolic rate down. S- so remarkable. Yeah. It's kinda like insulating people against weight regain.
MICHAEL EASTER: Yeah. And that's, and that's the big thing, is what...
And it's great that the study was pretty long too, because this is why I think most people stop dieting at about five and a half weeks. And what tends to happen is that your body is cranking up hunger signals as well. So I think one of the findings from the gravitostat hypothesis is that those hunger signals don't get cranked up as much either.
Now, that really, to me, is kinda one of the limiters of diet, right? It's like everyone can eat fewer calories for a handful of weeks, but what are you gonna do when all of a sudden your biology goes, "Hey, you're losing weight. We need you to eat more." Mm. "So we're gonna ramp up your hunger signals. We're gonna make you obsess more about food."
So if we can find ways to prevent that, that seems like a smart idea to me. You know, the tagline is, like, you're getting more from every step. Every step is gonna be a little bit harder, and because of that, you're gonna get more benefits from it. So for me, it's like... And I think what I love about it, and we were talking about this before we hit record here, is that it's so approachable and easy.
If I wanna go for a run, I gotta get on my special run clothes. I gotta get on my special run shoes. But if I wanna walk with weight, it's like if I'm taking the dogs for a walk, I'm just gonna throw on a pack that has whatever 20, 30, whatever pounds in it, right? I already have to take the dogs for a walk.
It is not that big of a deal. I don't have to put on special clothes. I can just wear normal walking shoes. But I can get a lot more from that walk by simply throwing on that pack. And I'll tell you in the case of the dogs, for dog owners out there if your pack has a hip belt, you can thread the leashes through the hip belt, and then now your hands are free too to, you know, send emails, take calls, whatever you might have to do.
And just get creative with carrying. I think, you know, to go back to my original point, like this is the, this is the human act. This is a human physical act, and we just don't do it anymore. And so I think starting to try and figure out how can I weave more of that back into my daily, weekly, monthly, yearly fitness practice I think would do people a lot of good.
And I'm not saying, you know, stop running. I'm not saying you don't need to ever lift weights. I'm not saying that at all. What I am saying is that all types of exercise are good, but we've just totally missed this really, really good one. Yeah. And we should think about adding it back in.
SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. All right, up next and running the anchor leg in this incredible compilation of exercises for better fitness and fat loss, to close things out, you're gonna be hearing from the one and only Jay Ferrugia.
He is the high performance coach to elite performers in the WWE, UFC, Major League Baseball, the NFL. The list goes on and on with those accolades, but also everyday people who want to get into the best shape of their lives seek out Jay Ferrugia because he has over 30 years of experience and more than 10,000 transformations have been attributed to his work.
10,000 bodies getting fitter and in need of a sitter because they're going out tonight. All right? The incredible Jay Ferruggia is about to share with you why most people waste valuable time and energy warming up incorrectly. You can be getting more gains. And I'm telling you this firsthand, firsthand experiences.
This was a game changer. This was a game changer for me. I've been able to put on muscle faster than I have in years by simply utilizing his insights when it comes to warming up. My strength gains were almost immediate, but especially accumulating over the weeks and months afterwards. And also my efficiency, my time in the gym has been so much more efficient.
And so I can't thank him enough for this insight, which you're gonna learn about, but also he's gonna be sharing the truth about the amount of volume that you need to build muscle and change your body faster. Okay? Volume is a key, key Major key alert. Key component of getting the gains that you want.
He's also gonna share the top three lower body exercises to get the biggest benefit in the shortest amount of time. Why does this matter? Because our lower body muscles have so much, yes, muscular potential, but that additional muscle, that body recomposition can also up-level our personal metabolic rate so that we're burning more calories just by living life.
So this is a super rich way filled with insights to close everything out. Let's hand the baton to the one and only Jay Ferrugia.
Talk a little bit more about junk volume, and also start off by talking about how much volume do we ideally need to target to build muscle, maintain our muscle, and also stay relatively lean.
JAY FERRUGGIA: So it, it's a complicated answer, and it's, it becomes more... It becomes increasingly difficult to give a clear answer on that just because of all the research we have now, and just the individual kind of differences between people. But, and so we used to look at weekly training volume, which I think is still a good metric, but it really kinda comes down to how much volume you do today in today's workout will determine how much you can do 48, 72, 96 hours later.
And so I like to look at, there's a few ways to break it down. Like, you could look at per workout, how much- how many total sets should you do? That's an easy way to measure volume. So I generally keep most of my clients in anywhere between eight total work sets and about 15, 16. That's it. Now, most people go to the gym, they probably do exponentially more than that.
They're probably doing 20, 30 sets. So we'll look at that. So i- in general, ei- eight to 12 for most of my guys. And then we look at also body part specific, right? Yeah. So generally, like there's been meta-analysis, multiple over the last few years, where they studied, they look at people doing five sets per body part per week versus 10 versus 15 versus 20.
They make the most gains in the five to 10 range. There's some crazy outlandish studies where they'll say the more volume, the better. But then if you, if, what you look at with those is the rest periods. This is kinda crazy, and it's hard to even wrap your head around. If you have short rest periods, because each set is less efficient, you need way more volume.
But if you're resting three minutes between sets, then you're fully recovered. You don't need as much volume. So it seems to be, for most people, that's why I lo- I like to look at studies, but I also like to base it on 30 years' worth of experience that I have, and I talk to other people who have that kind of experience, too.
We know that it's, it, the sweet spot's right around six to 10 sets per week per body part. Now, you can do all 10 of those sets on Monday, or you could do three, three, four on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. There's different ways to break it up. But it's not that easy, though. That's the thing. And, and that's where it gets a little complicated.
And then, then we also have, like, this, this creates fatigue too. So going back, so, so let's say I go to the gym right now. I do eight sets of chest. That's my whole workout, eight sets of chest. That will create more fatigue for me tomorrow than if I went to the gym and did eight sets, but did two sets of back, two sets of chest, two sets of bis, two sets of tris, because I won't have as much soreness and muscle damage.
So soreness and muscle damage creates fatigue. So now tomorrow's workout is gonna suffer more if I just did eight sets of chest. You see what I'm saying? Of course. So, so you- ideally, you wanna break up the volume and do a little bit less. You don't wanna cause all that inflammation and all that fatigue, right?
So that's where it gets a little tricky to, to give a, a super strict kinda, you know, straight answer. It really depends on the individual. I would say for most people, do less. Like, I start most people out on a full body workout either three days a week or every other day.
I actually prefer every other day.
When you're doing that, you really wanna start a baseline, which is one set, which is crazy. You do a few warmup sets, and you do one hard set for the body, for each body part, chest, shoulders, back, legs, you know, whatever. And then we assess volume and how much you can recover from, and then we'll push it up a little bit.
When you do it that way, the strength gains are insane. Like, you'll gain strength. Most of my guys are like, "Dude it's like I'm on steroids. These, these strength gains are crazy." Now, where, where we get more complex is certain muscles take longer to recover. So you might be able to run that for, like, let's say, six, eight, 10 weeks, and everything is skyrocketing, but chest always is the slowest.
Pressing, people are like, "Yo, I'm stalled out on pressing." Pressing universally stalls out the fastest. Ch- pecs are just easily damaged, and they're hard to recover. Hamstrings, probably second or tied, depending on the indi- individual. Hamstrings get damaged very easily. They recover slowly. So that's why it's hard, 'cause it's, like, individual muscle.
It's like, w- and then what are you doing, right? So if you're doing a bunch of... For example, if you do three sets of a standing leg curl, which trains the hamstring in the shortened position, that's exponentially easier to recover from than if you did three sets of stiff-legged deadlift. That trains the hamstring in the lengthened position.
Mm. Now we're gonna have a ton of soreness, muscle damage, and fatigue, whereas with the standing leg curl, we're gonna have no muscle soreness, no muscle damage, so very little fatigue, right? So you might be able to do more. So all these things have to be taken into account, which is like, it gets very complex.
I like to simplify things, but if we're really talking, you know, like really dialing it in, it is like rocket science.
SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, literally. Yeah. And we're the rocket. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And this, this is s- such an important thing. You mentioned the rest time. Like, this is something that we don't really consider.
In a lot of these studies, and, and one of the ones that I saw recently, a big meta-analysis looking at the amount of volume to get in, were recommending 60 to 90 seconds- ... between sets. Yeah. But you gotta do more volume over the week. Exactly. You gotta do more sets. So which is less efficient Yeah, and but you can come into it with the mindset of like, "I have less time in the gym, so I need to move faster."
Right? And so you can have that mindset, but also you could be like, "I d- I have to do less sets if I'm taking more time in between sets." Yeah. So it's just a different way of looking at it. Yeah. Either way, you can get an efficient, kind of much shorter workout than what we've been programmed to think about.
Yeah. And I know you've done this. You've seen this. You see guys that are in there for two hours. Yeah. You know? Like, literally it's been many times over the years, I go to the gym and somebody's already in their workout, and I finish my workout, and they're- Yep ... still going. Yeah. You know? And they're just like...
And, and, you know, usually some, you know, sometimes, like, older, you know, Yeah ... and they're just like, you know, "I just got my first hour in." Yeah. You know? About to get into hour two, you know? Yeah. Just like, you know, more power to you, man. Yeah. You know? So it's just, again, it's changing our mindset because also, and this isn't to take away something else which is important, which is the joy- Right
part of it, too. Totally. Yeah. Because th- this individual, this is a big part of his enjoyment, being there at the gym. And so what we're talking about, by the way, we're talking about efficiency and getting in the best shape of your life and transforming your body. And so one of the takeaways now is, again, having fewer sets, right?
So let's actually, can you explain, like explain a little bit more for us what we mean by volume? Like, what does that mean?
JAY FERRUGGIA: I mean, the easiest way is just, just the number of sets you're doing for a body part or muscle group. And then you asked before about junk volume. So that would be, what I would des- describe as junk volume would be any, for the most part, any sets 15 reps and above.
That's really junk volume. Now, guys our age, 50, 60, might say, "Well, I can't do the exercise unless I do 15 to 20 or my joints kill." If that's truly the case, then yes, true, you should do that many reps. But I would say to that person, "Hey, let's try to find a similar movement that fits you well, that doesn't hurt your knees or your elbows or whatever.
If you can do that safely, then we can bring the reps down to a more productive rep range that doesn't cause as much fatigue," right? Some people just be like, "Oh, I can't squat unless I do 30 reps." So like, yeah, okay, but maybe let's play around. There's some machines. Maybe there's a different variation of a squat that you can do.
You'd have to be really banged up not to be able to do something in an eight to 12 range. So it would be things over 15 reps I would call junk volume, for the most part. There's always exceptions. Sets that are further than two reps from failure I would consider junk volume, 'cause then you're just not stimulating any gains really.
It's kind of a warm-up set. And then excess warm-ups are things that I think are junk volume, too, and, and even fitness pros and influencers don't know this. When I train together, I'm like, "How do you not know how to warm up properly?" Nobody knows how to warm up properly, the way I think you should warm up, which reduces a lot of fatigue.
So most people will go in, and they'll do, let's say they're, let's just say they're gonna bench press, right? They'll do 10 or 12 reps, put on more weight, do 10 or 12 reps, put on more weight, and keep getting up until they're working weight or top weight or whatever. What I would advise most people to do is go in, first set maybe eight to 10,
but you want to do the least amount.
You're only trying to prepare yourself for the work sets. So then I might do five to eight. Then I might do three reps and then one, one, one. Now lat- now if you're moving, let's say, from your first pressing exercise, if you're moving to a second pressing exercise, you're already warmed up. But most people will do that again, 10, 10, 10.
It's like, that's not doing anything. It's just causing fatigue, and it's a c- a complete waste of time. So then what I would do is if we're going to the second exercise, I might literally just do one to three reps, just, they, you can call them feeder sets, just feeling it out, whatever. You're just kind of training your nervous system for a slightly different move, like if you're doing an incline press then to a flat press.
So a lot of people just waste time and do junk volume with, with their warm-up sets. Like if I'm on a machine that's selectorized with the pin, right? I'll do, I'll sit there and do all my, instead of doing 10, I'll do five, move the pin down, three, move the pin down, two, move the pin down, one, do the pin down one, one, one.
'Cause I'm pretty strong, so I might be doing the stack on that. But I'm not gonna do a set of 10, walk around, do another set of 10. I'll just get the entire warm-up done and maybe do 15 reps going all the way down the stack in 30 seconds. Then I'll rest two or three minutes before I start my work set.
So that's what I mean by people warming up incorrectly. It's just creating fatigue, and then what that does, too, is your main set, your money set that you're actually gonna stimulate hypertrophy with, the weight's gonna be so much less because you created all that fatigue and just wasted all that energy, you know?
And especially, again, if you're over 40, 50, or whatever, you don't have the energy that you had when you were 20, you know?
SHAWN STEVENSON: So I want to ask you about this as well when it comes to the splits that we're doing, right? You mentioned full body every other day And obviously there's a lot of ways to, a lot of paths to the goal.
And you mentioned, you know, we can get all of those sets in, the volume on a certain body part in one day, right? And that's one of the kinda standard things is, like, national chest day. Yeah. Leg day, and just split it up. But I don't think you get the touch points to keep that really good hypertrophy and, and, and your nervous system kinda trained without having those touch points more frequently.
Right? And that's just something that I found out. It took me so long to get that, 'cause I would, I'd go to the gym and obliterate my legs. Yeah. Be sore for five days and then- Yeah ... you know, two days off, and then I'm back to blowing my legs up again.
Yep. But what about a split, right, where we do The kinda classic split where we got a push day, pull day, legs, maybe a rest day or just repeat What about a framework like that?
JAY FERRUGGIA: Yeah, like you mentioned, there's so many, and what you said before was true. So personal preference and enjoyment does weigh into that.
Like, you might say on paper, "Hey, a once a week split is no good," but if you love it, then it's great, right? Yeah. So, that's something to really consider. The other thing I would say is most of the time I start people with more frequency, right? Like I said, like, full body. The next split would be upper, lower.
You could do ... We tend to be married to more traditional splits like full body, upper, lower, push, pull, legs, but I split things up in ways that I've never seen before that just kinda make sense to me based on what I was talking about before, like individual body parts recovery. So at the end of a, let's say, a pull day, I might
If someone wants to do a four-day body part split, right? Like let's say they're doing push, pull, legs, arms. Now, I wanna get more than once a week frequency, so on the, at the end of the pull day, maybe we'll add in some leg extensions, so now in addition to that leg day, they're getting a second time on legs, but they're not obliterating the legs, right?
And then, on the arm day, we're hitting some dips or close grips, so now we're getting chest a second time. And then the leg day, maybe we'll throw in a row at the end, so we're hitting back a second time. So you could still do a traditional bodybuilding split, but increase the frequency. And then again, that's individual.
You know, maybe what's yours, what's your priority? If it's shoulders, maybe we'll add more frequency for shoulders. Backs, same, you know, same thing. But I tend to stick with really upper, lower or f- or, or, or full body most of the time for most people. And then, but you could even do things like push, pull, legs, and for whatever reason, most people think you can only do push, pull, legs once a week, meaning Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or six days a week, Monday through Saturday.
But you can do it ... The way I like to do it is push, pull, off, legs, off, repeat. So then it's once every five days. Or you could do two on, one off. So push, pull, off, legs, push, and continue to do that way. So it's more frequency. What you can also do is, let's say you decide I wanna bring up my biceps. Normally you'd only do curls on the pull day, but I throw those rules out.
So you might do push, pull, off. Now we do biceps first on leg day 'cause it's your priority. So we get them on the pull day indirectly with all the rows and the pull-downs, and we get them directly fresh at the beginning of the leg day. And you could do that with other body parts that are weak, too. You know, just prioritize them where you wanna put them.
So there, there's a lot of ways, non-traditional ways to do splits that I think are really effective. And then again, it's just, like, we assess how does the person feel? How much fatigue are you getting? How much soreness are you getting? And w- what are your results like, and how much are you enjoying it, you know?
SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Now, you also mentioned, and this is awesome by the way, you also mentioned How far we wanna go in that set, right? You mentioned after getting past
generally 15 reps, and again, this, there's, there's situations for that. Yeah. You know, maybe you wanna train endurance in some kinda way, you know, to be able to do a bunch of muscle ups.
Yeah. You know, you, I don't know, you're doing a movie with Tom Cruise or something. Right. You need to do some wild stuff. But in general, again, if we're looking at what's most effective, we're not getting that high in our rep range. But how far do we wanna go? And so my question is, do we wanna go to a place where we are at complete muscle failure, right?
So how, how, how do we know that our set is the right number of reps?
JAY FERRUGGIA: Right. So to produce hypertrophy, to elicit hypertrophy, you want to have really high levels of intramuscular force production. You wanna be r- recruiting those fast twitch fibers. So you do that with heavy loads generally in a five to eight, five to 10 range, and then you wanna be close to failure.
Now, how do you know what failure is? You have to train to failure on a lot of things for a while, and then you know what it is. 'Cause there's been studies- ... and just real-world experience where people think they're at failure, and they're actually five to seven reps from failure. So it's like that was a complete- that was a warm-up set.
That was a complete waste of time. And even myself, I've done that, and after training for 30 years, like, sometimes if I'm just by myself, I'll be like, I, I think I have a pretty good gauge of what one rep in reserve is, and I'm like, "I don't know, maybe..." And then I'll get an extra three reps sometimes, like geez, you know?
So you really- sometimes you have to push to failure. I don't recommend doing it all the time. That's why, but I do like lower volume. One of the benefits of lower volume is you can train harder, and I like to train hard. If I had to leave a bunch of reps in the tank, it would just not be enjoyable for me whatsoever.
So lower volume, I tend to train I tend to work with a lot of type A guys. It's always been that way for 30 years, competitive athletes, now WWE guys, and then just guys our age who are just type A hustlers, right? So they wanna train hard. So then, again, volume should be lower because you can't train super hard and do a ton of sets, right?
You're just gonna be burnt out all the time. So get to know what failure feels like on all the exercises you're doing, and then leave about one to two reps in the tank, generally one in the tank for the most part. There's a significant difference. Like, let's say you do 12 sets. If you did those 12 sets to failure, and then next week you did those 12 sets but you left one rep in the tank, you'll feel the difference in terms of fatigue throughout the week, and also your progressive overload, which is the fundamental main rule we wanna be following to, to make any progress, is you'll get significantly better gains, right?
So each week that you hit that particular workout, you'll go up more and more and faster than if you hit failure on every set.
SHAWN STEVENSON: Okay. Now, what about the variety of exercises, right? If we're talking about, let's just talk about back, right? We're training our back. You know, with a lot of trainers, you know, it's, it's a mindset of like, "I gotta keep my client interested."
Yeah. You know? "I gotta keep mixing it up." Yeah. So what is your perspective on the variety of exercises and how frequently you're changing the exercise you're doing?
JAY FERRUGGIA: Yeah. I, so I, I used to do that where I would try to entertain clients years ago, but I found that what's entertaining is actually making progress and getting stronger and seeing numbers go up.
I like that more. My clients like that more. So- I think too much variety is no good. And so we started talking about fatigue. Too much variety causes too much fatigue. 'Cause if I go in, let's say my, my workout's five exercises. If I've been doing those five exercises for weeks in a row, I don't have the CNS demands of having to learn, and the coordination demands of having to learn that new movement.
Even if it's a movement you've been doing for 20 years, it's still when you do it for the first time in let's say six to eight weeks, you're kind of adapting, figuring things out. So it's more nervous- it's more CNS fatigue if I go in and do five different movements all the time just for variety, like the old,
SHAWN STEVENSON: central nervous system.
JAY FERRUGGIA: Yes. Yep. And so it's just more demanding, so you're gonna increase more fatigue, and then it's really hard to track progressive overload. And progressive overload, you know, some people could argue, "Oh, you don't have to go up every workout," and you don't, but it- it's the only legit measure we have to know is your programming good?
Is it working? Because if you're going up in weight, that's black and white. We know. If you're just like, "Oh, I feel good, I'm getting a pump," it's like, yeah, but that's abstract. That doesn't tell us anything. But if you're able to press 100 today, then you go up to 102 and a half, and then 105, and we see it going up, and then it plateaus, and then it goes up.
Okay, now we know it's working. Then we can, we can say like, "Hey, man, let's pull out one set here. Let's stop one rep short of failure here." Then it becomes like a science experiment versus just guesswork. We're just throwing things against the wall and hoping they work, you know?
SHAWN STEVENSON: Now, with this said, which exercises are best?
Now, I know this is tough, all right? But maybe this is even a little selfish. All right? So let's talk about training legs. Sure. And the reason this matters, thank goodness there's been like a paradigm shift in, in training legs, all right? There's been a lot of lollipop people walking around- Mm-hmm
you know? Where leg day has been skipped many times. Right. And so but there's so much metabolic benefit, performance- Mm ... power. There's so many remarkable and, and vital reasons to train your legs. Yeah. So I wanna ask you, if I had to like- Life or death, three best leg exercises. Mm. All right? And for, and, and again, keep in mind as well, this can be, of course, for everybody, but specifically for people who are over 40.
Okay. What do you think?
JAY FERRUGGIA: I would say some type of knee flexion, so that could be some type of leg curl. Maybe-
SHAWN STEVENSON: But what, what are the three best? Okay. I don't want some type. Okay. What's the best?
JAY FERRUGGIA: Oh, we, we just wanna build the biggest legs we can without wrecking your joints, with feeling good. Yes. Okay. So a seated leg curl.
Okay. I personally like a glute ham raise for variety, and because you just feel good. Like, your knees, hips, and back feel great. It's a body weight exercise, but it's really hard to do. Most division one athletes can't even do one rep. So if we're just going, picking one, I'm picking a really well-designed seated leg curl.
The reason a seated is better than a lying and a standing is because the seated trains the lengthen position. See, if I'm here and my leg's straight out, it's training from a stretch position, which generally if you're looking at exercises and ranking them in a hypertrophy perspective, you wanna train the stretch position and the mid-range.
The shortened position doesn't really matter that much. That's why I like a leg extension as just icing, icing on the cake. So I'm gonna go seated leg curl, some type of squat variation. Now, this is where we, I ... It's hard to pick one- Right ... because everybody's so different. I, yeah. What kills your knees, my knees might feel great.
Someone else is like, "Eh." So it's gonna be some type of squat. If I had to pick one, I would say generally most people can do a safety bar squat, especially if we add a little heel wedge, 'cause most people don't have the ankle mobility to do it perfectly. So if I had to pick one, that would be it, a safety bar squat with either a 10 or 15-degree wedge.
SHAWN STEVENSON: Safety bar, what is that?
JAY FERRUGGIA: The safety bar is the bar with the pad and the sh- the shoulder thing that comes here. So what that-
SHAWN STEVENSON: So it's a, it's a, it's a back squat bar, but it has- Yeah ... a piece in the front.
JAY FERRUGGIA: Exactly. So you can have your ... The benefit is really for shoulder health, 'cause if you get older and you're tighter, sometimes it's hard.
You don't have the external rotation to get back here, and then all of a sudden you're kinda hurting your shoulders on leg day, which makes no sense. Right. Yeah. So then you go press next day, you're like, "Why are my shoulders stiff from leg day," right? Yeah. It doesn't make sense. So, and it does t- you tend to be able to stay upright a little bit more.
There's, there's some things some benefits. So a seated leg curl, a safety bar squat with heels elevated, and then some, you gotta do some type of single leg thing. So that's, if I had to just pick one, of course, there's all different split squat variations. There's walking lunges. I would go with a rear foot elevated split squat Those would be, those would be the three
SHAWN STEVENSON: Isn't there another name for that?
JAY FERRUGGIA: Bulgarian split squat.
SHAWN STEVENSON: The Bulgarian- Yeah ... split squat. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The last time I trained with Luka- Okay ... you know, we did that as well.
JAY FERRUGGIA: Yeah, he loves those.
SHAWN STEVENSON: And there's so many different variation of that, too. You know, obviously you can do a weighted. Yeah. You could, you know, do one hand with the weighted.
JAY FERRUGGIA: Yeah, one hand here, one hand here, two hands, safety bar, regular bar. I mean, there's a million ways to do it. If, for the purpose of this exercise, if you're challenging me on, I had to do one, I would have it with stability, 'cause we're looking at hypertrophy. So without stability, you're gonna have less force production, less intermuscular force production.
So if I'm having to balance, now if I hold that dumbbell in one hand on my rear leg, and I hold onto the upright of the power rack, I'm gonna get a greater hypertrophy stimulus out of that. If you're an athlete and you're just tr- training stability and whatever, fine. But if we're just looking at hypertrophy, I'm gonna grab on and in- anytime I increase the stability of an exercise, it's better for hypertrophy.
Now, that doesn't mean you just do machines, 'cause then you walk around like Frankenstein. But, you know, you prioritize some things.
SHAWN STEVENSON: Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today. I hope that you got a lot of value out of this. Again, it ain't over. Summer's not over. Take advantage of these insights.
Go and put something into play for yourself. Utilize this time. Give yourself a goal. You know, mark some dates on the calendar. Give yourself maybe a 30-day transformation time period, and just start putting some things into place for yourself on a consistent basis, just adding on, you know, little bit by little bit.
And listen, I hope, again, that you enjoyed this. We've got so much more in store for you coming up. We got some incredible master classes and world-leading experts coming your way very, very soon, so make sure to stay tuned. Take care, have an amazing day, and I'll talk with you soon.
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