How to gain muscle and strength if you're untrained and out of shape | Peter Attia and Andy Galpin

let's now talk about hypothetical ways to train and let's I did this with Lane and people really liked this approach um so maybe we'll try to do the same thing let's go through some hypothetical case studies right so person comes to you and says Andy I want you to design a training program for me here's what I look like now here's what my goals are and the goal is a No Holds Barred approach to what they need to do in other words words don't don't unless I specify it as part of the problem don't hold

back you know all right so we'll start with the easy one which is the untrained individual um who comes to you and says okay I bought it you know I'm I'm all in on this um I'm willing to to go to the gym you know Peter's all we already got me doing a couple hours a week of Zone 2 on the bike but I don't even know how to approach this strength training thing I'm willing to I don't know put three hours a week in the gym I want to get bigger because I you know

I had a dexa scan and it really showed that my almi was about the 40th percentile and I really you know looking at the literature I think being at or above the 75th percentile for lean mass is a better place to be so that's where I'd like to be in in a year two years three years um but I also want it to matter you know I want to be stronger I want to be able to do stuff when I get older I don't just want to get bigger I want to be able to um

never enter a competition I'm not here to enter the Strongman Competition but like I never want to hurt I want to be able to chop wood in my backyard I want to be able to carry stuff around I want to be able to travel with a backpack on BL any any other questions you have for me before you designed my program Andy how many days per week did you say um I I could be up to going into the gym like three days a week an hour at a time three days total Okay cool so

you've basically described every one of our executive clients in our rapid Health optimization program so so I can nail this one um I obviously at most of my career with professional athletes but we we deal with this problem all the time at rapid so here here's what I would say you've already got zone two stuff yep we steady state y great copy that um here's what you need to pay attention to you described muscle was insufficient so we got it in our brain we're automatically thinking we've got to put on muscle mass you also said

they're untrained though and one of the things you're going to see is quite clearly oh sorry I I sort of left out um like I I was active in high school and college like I it's not like I've never done anything but you know I've been working really hard at my job started a family and so the last 10 years my only exercise has been um like activities of daily living which include sometimes hiking and playing with my kids but yes I have I haven't been in the gym I haven't been in the gym in

a decade perfect yeah you still described everybody okay in Rapid Health optimization right no problem so the way that I'm just going to walk you through sort of I'm gonna break the fourth dimensional wall here my brain immedately thinking all right we need hypertrophy this is the base and Foundation of everything you're going to get stronger by doing hypertrophy at this stage of your training like we talked earlier those are not always couple you can get stronger without getting more muscle mass very clearly and you can get really a lot of muscle without optimizing strength

we talked about that at the end of those spectrums you're you're at this end of the spectrum the opposite those are going to be basically linked at this phase in your train so we don't have to do both you can do one and get both adaptations at the same time because I'm so low on the curve anything is going to give me a bit of both in fact we can get that from not even lifting weights because in fact of our training studies you'll see that you'll see equal adaptations in muscle size hypertrophy from even

steady state cycling initially right for six to eight weeks you'll see equal um all of our concurrent training models and studies will show the same thing like not only is there not interference an interference effect at this stage it's a complimentary in fact a study came out more recently showing six weeks of endurance exercise steady state cycling prior to hypertrophy actually enhanced and result muscle growth H so spending time initially getting physically fit before trying to add muscle mass for someone like this it's it's a very fruitful investment great so the fact that I've been

doing my zone 2 for two months actually has you pretty happy super happy okay okay I'm also thinking all right you mentioned longevity physical function as we move down you also mentioned you said three years from now or something which tells me your mind is really thinking about longterm investment that's right Peter has me committed to you know this is not about looking good in my bathing suit in six weeks I'm not in a rush copy that y right so one of the things that you'll see very specifically with aging is a loss of physical

function and that's more Geared for power in fact the rate of you've probably covered this before uh rate of loss of muscle mass as you age is something like a half to 1% per year loss of muscle strength is double to Triple that loss of muscle power is triple that and so what are you seeing you see a very precipitous drop in muscle power and why is that happening a little bit of loss of speed aha so preserving in fact you can do this you can go look at the world records of all sports across

age groups so if you look at like track and field what's the world record in the 100 meter dash and and what's the world record for the 30 to this what's the world record for the 40 to 50y Old range 50 to 60 and what you'll see is strength sports like powerlifting the world record through age doesn't go down that much the world record in speed and jumping Sports just falls off a cliff yeah so preserving speed in addition uh my friend Greg giki just published a paper this week in Journal of physiology a blue

ribbon journal in our field right so hi get and this was actually looking specifically at single fiber contractile function changes with aging and the data here are extraordinarily clear have been a long R you see very little loss of function in SLO fibers through aging regardless of exercise or not I sort of mentioned this earlier but you see a dramatic reduction in fast tge fibers and you actually don't see um a drop of power and so there's nothing internal to the muscle fiber that's going down so another way to say this is if you take

that's the problem it's the fiber size the atrophy of fast s fibers is the almost exclusive the problem with aging in muscle you have got to maintain fast twitch fiber size now there are some loss of total fibers but that is actually very difficult to find scientifically counting total amount of fiber fibers in a live human muscle is extraordinarily difficult so what really what we're after here is anytime I'm thinking longevity I'm thinking primarily absolute force and power um has to be preserved and it's this is a fast fiber atrophy issue um this is a

so these are the things spinning in my head so how is this three day a week combination going to look okay and sorry just to make just to make sure we translate that Andy because I think that was so uh important what you just said you're basically looking I'm 50 and you're looking down the barrel of my life saying you want to live another 40 years and you want to be functioning the most important thing I can do for you in the gym is not focus on the things that you're going to get for free

it's focus on the things that are declining so rapidly and and I will as a corollary to that get a bunch of that other stuff for free but I have to focus on the atrophy of your fast twitch muscle fibers because it's already happening and we need to saave that off and we need to put in the gym systems to support the reversal of that process because if I just ignore that you know I might as well be that highly exercised twin guy who's you know doing all his cardio but at the end of the

day he can't jump off the curb he can't you know he's going to be this the hyper cardio athlete who's still a decrepit person in the last decade of their life to make it even better or worse those fibers require specific types of training unless you specifically do that you just don't have any chance of those tissues the other tissues aren't as uh like hypertrophy hypertrophy is pretty non-specific in terms of your training application but if you want to make sure that you're targeting fast twich fibers like this this requires very specific protocols or or

like have no chance fast slow touch fibers are going to get activated with any activity of daily Liv they're going to get activated with any amount of physical experience whether you're doing intervals zone two zone six that doesn't matter right Zone 28 pick whatever you want so are good it's the fast twich fibers that require intention and that's why I yeah I make such a big deal of it because you can't accidentally get those yep that's right it's sort of like what we say in fighting is like you can sometimes accidentally not knock somebody out

there are fluke punches there are no accidental submissions like there's no fluke arm bars like you have to know what you're doing there or not so coming back to our our Avatar by the way I love that line because I often say that to especially my female patients who are completely untrained borderlining on ktic um afraid of lifting weights you know they just want to do yoga all day and when I say look we have a problem here you're opic um and you're so weak I am worried for your life and they say I I

just don't want to lift weights because I just don't want to get too big and it's like I have good news for you the myth the myth of accidental muscle has been fully debunked fully me and every other guy out there can tell you we're waiting for it to happen it hasn't happened the the odds that you're going to wake up and think God damn it I'm too muscular it it's just it just won't happen the vast majority of us sitting around hoping and praying and devoting most of our waking hours and non- waking hours

to this goal that you think might accidentally happen you're good you're totally safe here um all right so we know we have to preserve past muscle fibers for the long term we know we have to take care of V2 Max this is another I'm sure you cover this dep important thing for longevity all right but we got some constraints we also have to be considerate of I have not trained in 10 years I'm going to get very sore very quickly and if I become too sore that it dissuades further training now I'm GNA lose you

I bought in but that was too hard I was so sore I couldn't even walk blah blah blah blah blah right I think in your show with Holly she talked about making sure you start with a very low volume like like way lower volume than you think we have time like we just need to move I'm going to be very cautious of Ecentric movements because they will um they will generate more soreness than relative and the last part before I give you some direct answers is we want to start building movement patterns that we're going

to need over time and so this is an investment we can get all that done by doing the same sort of training we're we're practicing movement patterns we're getting that stuff grooved so we don't pick up injuries later we're not getting excessively sore we're building some muscle mass because we're going to get that anyways and we don't need to go so if this was a six-month program because you can't write the same program for the next 50 years right what's the first six months I guess is if that's your question y all right zone two

is out of the way um I would probably stick to fairly similar uh to what Holly said initially which was okay something like one to three working sets of probably four exercises a day something like that um we want to spread those across upper lower and kind of some different movement patterns and we want to practice the compound movements I'm not going to isolated single joint movements yet I'm going to let's learn how to do a goblet squat okay this is a squat you're going to hold the dumbbell sort of in front of your chest

great we're going to learn to do a hip extension we're going to learn to do basic overhead press or some bent rows things like that and I'm going to spend 30 minutes on those things I don't even really care about tracking progression at this point we're going to track um did you did to get the movement pattern down right did you brace as our as our spine and the proper position are you breathing through um through your nose and through proper positions is your neck in the right spot great all this foundational stuff that feels

like not a big deal at all right now because it shouldn't be but we're making sure boxes are checked so that when we start progressing low later that neck doesn't start getting irritated and we're just being in that position we're going to do that right okay so we're basically completely optimizing movement patterns we're making sure we don't hurt ourselves um we're learning new skills right we're learning skills of exercise let's now go to the next six months so I come back to you Andy and I say um you know this has been great like this

is not as difficult as I thought it was going to be I I really I've kind of enjoyed going to the gym and honestly like I even see a little more definition in my arms and my legs and I'm a little hungrier so I've been eating a little bit more I haven't lost any weight or anything but my pants fit a little bit better um I'm I'm I'd like to take this up a notch I can't commit more time though Andy so I'm really kind of you know three 60 Minute spots is all I can

get because I still got to you know get my kids from school and and work is just as demanding as ever um but how do I increase the desire to be even bigger and even stronger and even more functional great so now we have to start investing that 60 Minutes in those three workouts into different sections per workout so we need to start doing something to start addressing power and speed um I'm going to give that the first 10 to 15 minutes though we don't need to go nuts now but we need to introduce those

movement patterns and those velocities and those that that tissue tolerance we call it so your ability to land and absorb it's not creation of power but it's the back end how did I stop that movement how do I land from it we're going to continue to invest in in the muscle growth now we can start pushing the pace a little bit and then we're going to actually at the end start investing in either muscular endurance and or interval stuff so if we're still continuing to do zone two that's great but we haven't worked on getting

heart rate up coming back down and regulating that whole piece so what's that look like the first 10 or so minutes of of all three workouts per week we're going to do something in basic movement patterns so let's imagine a box jump right we'll do a box jump we're g to jump from the ground and land on a box that's say 18 inches in the air right we're going to practice that movement pattern I want you landing on the box not on the ground that reduces the Ecentric Landing because you're going to be absorbing way

less so you're not going to get as sore but you're going to have to pop a little bit you're going to have to jump to get up there and we're bracing that movement pattern I want to probably do something how are you determining that height Andy 18 inches seems really high to me how do I know if I shouldn't be 12 to start what what level of fatigue how many times would I do this so that I can gauge how high it needs to be there should be no fatigue this is simply about high this

is load tolerance this is load tolerance then load tolerance and it's it's introducing power okay so you're going to start learning how to move fast but you're going to do it in a a safe thing we're not g to pull a hamstring and and just to be clear Andy I you know I I I don't I don't need to compete in sports I don't play basketball anymore I'm not are you sure you need me doing this because all I'm trying to do is I just want to be able to pick up my grandkids in 30

years or 20 years yeah 100% so in order to pick up your grandkids you need to not be in the hospital right you need to be not living in an assisted living home do you know what puts people in a s living home falling and breaking hip the connection between morbidity mortality a hip break is extraordinary after the age of 60 it's not even 90 it is 60 is um reason large reason people fall is they actually don't have foot speed what do you mean if you catch yourself your toe on the corner or you

slip you have to have the foot speed to be able to put your other foot or that foot back out in front of you in the proper position then you have to have the Ecentric strength to stop that fall and so I need foot speed to get there and then I need Ecentric St to brace the fall so you don't land and break your hip that's what's going to keep you playing with your kids when you're 60 got it so even though yeah so I it's not even though I don't want to be a a

quote unquote explosive athlete I still have to kind of train like one in some part and I'm asking for 10 minutes of your workout okay right so I want to keep you there um you can imagine the I could continue to give you examples and analogies but this is if you want to go for a hike again and you trip or you need to be able to get up and do a little scramble you know your your your 10-year-old grandkid is going to want to go up that rock like you gotta have a little pop

to get up there too G to be able to pull yourself like all these things right that's what's going to keep you from going so what are some other you know I'll just sit down here and wait you go ahead yeah exactly exactly I had a patient once say something that I loved um I asked him kind of what were his goals for aging and he said um to always be able to go to my kids and grandkids and he meant it both micro and macro right meaning I never want to be in the position

where I can't get on an airplane and travel and go wherever they are and I never want to not be able to go physically in the moment to where they are I I thought it was just a very elegant explanation that second part is brilliant yeah that's so good because that's the example there I'll wait here versus no I'm gonna come with you up that little rock yeah it's it's the water slide it's I don't want to climb up those stairs it's seven of them but like it's all the little stuff right um I have

two little kids so I'm very I'm very in the world of like what a four-year-old will do so what are some other things that we would do in that first 10 to 15 minutes so I love the idea of the box jump with landing on top so you don't have that huge Ecentric de massive deceleration um what about bounds skips things like that would all be in there y yep medicine ball throws are great medicine ball Slams are great medicine ball to houses up in the air high as you can go as far as you

can go behind you um these are reinform reinforcing movement patterns you built the previous 6 months proper hip extension versus low back extension Etc it is also doing what we call Triple extension so you're simultaneously explosively extending the hip knee and ankle and this is a very important human movement pattern um you can do that without jumping and Landing by throwing a mess B tosing it um if you go to to to Plyometrics um you have to be a little bit careful here PL metrics are totally safe for all ages as long as you account

for volume you just can't do too many of them at too high of of an intensity in this case the Ecentric load so um jump r a five minute jump rope is just Plyometrics right now when you go single leg to single leg you start increasing risk like so if you're to jump from your right leg and land on your right leg alone risk but twole to two leg is very easy I mean for for p sake you can play hopscotch you Hopscotch is just two-legged petric to single leg to back to forward progression lateral

it's it's a wonderful little exercise isn't it interesting when you go to a playground and watch kids play to realize the they're not being told to do this just the inherent ability that they have to be explosive and as you said how that deteriorates with age like you just can't imagine watching a group of 40 year old sitting around just deciding let's go play this fun game where we jump around I mean you do that if you're playing a sport you do that if it's part of your pre-programmed workout but it's not the equivalent of

neat right where you just there no spontaneous yeah it's not spontaneous yeah um last one I love is actually don't get thrown off by this word but I love sprinting and I just just just give me 70% you would be surprised of like whoa it feels like great terrible but if you can get on like a Woodway or or a controll um situation like that and you can just do some like 70% spr just getting through the motion kind of a Tempo is what you if you're a runner like you call it that type of

stuff for for very short distances I'm talking like a 15 seconds just kind of stride it out okay slowly come back down wait a minute or two fully recover here okay ready roll back into it two three four seconds and then give me pick it up for 5 seconds six seconds okay slowly back down just getting used to handling movement and being an athlete and moving and not being everything is locked into a position where it's structured and secure and all that stuff so I really really like movement athletic movement and and multiple planes um

for people the last example I'll give you is just back to like High School Middle School sports gave me we're going to play 10 minutes of of basketball go to the court we going to shoot dve it up and down like we're going to play Rocka balls our warm-up today we're going to play Bad mitt you get over there I get over here like two on two bad like you can do a lot of little different things that are going to be multipler it's going to be speed agility quickness at this point so you're going

to get change of Direction all this stuff is the foundation piece you need to get to when we actually do some Speed and Agility drills next year or wherever we're going to get to right like which is going to be part of your plan so those are all a bunch of examples um I would recommend doing a different one each day of those so it's Mondays we're going to do medball stuff cool Wednesdays it's going to be pickle ball and then Fridays we're going to do um you know some some some jump stuff and some

medicine B horizontal throws like whatever the case is uh or it can be jump rup it's going to be Hopscotch you know things like that some um I'm not against bounding broad jumps I typically want to start here two on two so twole leave two leg land for this person but they can they don't have to be forward they can be lateral jumps they can be combinations they can be all kinds of things um you honestly you be a surprise like I don't want to say this too loud in case somebody hears but that stuff's

actually kind of fun like it's it's pretty fun you're gonna get a lot of Giggles you're like I haven't jumped like this you like like they gonna feel weird and it's gonna be way different than what they're thinking the SL train thing is like you'll get some giggles um so that would be my that's your opener that's that's 10 to 15 minutes okay now we're hot now we're ready okay now we're going to move into uh a strength training and so what I would still do is keep the same structure total body on all three

days because here's what's also going to happen once a month you're going to miss one of those days for more your kid's G to get sick I got too busy at work blah blah blah blah blah if you do body part splits you start missing all day you're going to miss chunks so I like in these situations these people I want whole body every day you're going to recover just fine um I would do a different rep range so I would do something like Monday is going to be say three to four sets of five

to seven reps you're going to be able to go heavier you're gonna have a a minute and a half rest between each one Wednesday though what RP do you do there seven to eight okay so meaning just just for folks listening at the end of that you're finishing with maybe two reps left in the tank yep okay yep like I want to like for the working sets y yep for Wednesday let's go 15 to 20 reps per set right so now you're actually going to have less you're probably going to drive less soreness because you're

activating probably less faster ters you're going to get more of a pump you can actually like push the repetitions and you can work harder and probably get a little bit less sore and you'll feel more of an acute satisfaction for a lot of people right like you feel the feeling and your risk has gone down a little bit and then the third day um you could go really wild and you could do something like uh isometrics where you're just holding positions very good for joint very good for connected tissue and very good for just doing

something different all three of these are equally effective for hypertrophy so your gains in muscle size are going to be identical across the board and now you've introduced three different [Music] elements