Unlock the Science of Building Muscles with Tim Frey in the latest episode of Helix Gym Podcast! Dive into the reality behind stretching vs. strength training, the science of muscle hypertrophy, and celebrate success stories that motivate us to push further. Tune in and leave the myths behind!

Top 5 Points Listeners Will Learn:

⚡ The Truth Behind Stretching and Strength Training: Is hardcore static stretching really as effective as strength training for muscle growth? We dive into the details of the recent study that has everyone talking.

⚡ Muscle Hypertrophy Training Volume Explained: Understand the right balance of sets, reps, and intensity essential for optimal muscle growth. From deciding the sets per week to gauging the perfect rep range, get all your answers.

⚡ Optimizing Muscle Growth: Learn why lifting loads above 70-75% 1RM is crucial for recruiting higher levels of type 2 muscle fibers which are responsible for more power, strength, and growth.

⚡ Success Stories – Real People, Real Results: Celebrate Andrew Savage’s phenomenal 31kg weight loss journey and discover the secrets behind his incredible transformation.

⚡ Debunking Fitness Myths with Tim: Get answers to common fitness questions and misunderstandings, like dealing with shin pain and potential remedies.

Listen, learn, and let’s get jacked, the informed way!

Speaker 1: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Helix Gym podcast, where we dig deep on the latest fitness news, debunk common myths, and help you make informed choices about your fitness journey. I’m your host, Tim Frey, and as always, before we dive deep, I want to give a massive shout out to our sponsors, Flex Fitness, which are Australia’s number one equipment megastore. Honestly, if you’re just starting out a home gym or upgrading your gear, they’re going to have you covered. Check out their extensive collection at Flex equipment.com. Let’s dive into today’s episode. So the first section on the podcast today is called gains on the internet. And I know this is a brand new podcast. So what I’ve done is I’ve gone through and I’ve collated and looked at basically what is trending at the moment on the internet. And I actually found a really interesting study, and it was a study slash fitness story that caught my attention and was shared by a lot of fitness enthusiasts all over the internet. So essentially there’s a guy called Menno Henselmans, and he shared a study slash headline that said hardcore static stretching induces as much muscle growth as strength training. Okay, that’s a recent study. So let me say that again. Hardcore static stretching aka just stretching statically induces as much muscle damage and growth as strength training. So essentially what he’s saying here is stretching gets you as much muscle growth as strength training does. Which, you know, if you’re hearing that for the first time, you’re probably like, bullshit.

Speaker 1: [00:01:30] Which when I did hear that headline or read that headline for the first time, I was also thinking, bullshit. So I’ll go into it sounds pretty incredible. But now some people are thinking they can stretch their way to a jacked dream physique. But before you fucking get rid of those dumbbells, let’s go into the details of this study and actually go through the methods. And then I’ll probably prove to you that it’s probably not going to happen for you. If you think you can stretch your way to a jacked physique. So every I’d say not lazy motherfucker, but I’d say, like most people out there, if there was a magic pill that you could just take and you could be in incredible shape, most people would just take it. But the truth is, anyone has a great physique, has worked their way to a great physique. Your body or your physique is something that you cannot lie about. It keeps score. And I don’t know what the quote was, but I’m going to try to recite it on the podcast. Just off the bat, is your current state or physical performance is a direct reflection of the choices you have made. And you know, before I even get into this study, that stretching is not going to get you an incredible physique. So the study compared gains from strength training. Strength training to those of a very intense stretching protocol. And when I say very intense stretching protocol, I mean, it was fucking intense.

Speaker 1: [00:02:50] So intense that no one would do it. So there were no significant differences between the groups in their strength and size gains measured by a voluntary contraction, muscle thickness, pennation angle and ankle ankle flexibility. So, you know, pennation angle, muscle thickness, voluntary contraction. These are just essentially scientific speak. Or the scientists that are creating these studies, popping those variables in there for things to measure, interesting measurements. Are there relevant to you? Probably not. And these weren’t untrained individuals. They were strength trained at least twice a week and most were athletes. These results of the study did highlight how effective purely passive strength stretch mediated hypertrophy can be for muscle growth. They did a lot of stretching. And then the other thing is how effective full range of motion strength training is for flexibility. They trained full range of motion on a calf raise okay. However, the protocol to get these results was hardcore, whereas the strength training was conventional. The strength training consisted of five sets of straight leg calf raises in a leg press. So imagine you’re in a leg press. You’re just doing calf raises on it. I don’t think this was single leg. I would assume that was bilateral and they were doing a 12, so they were working up to a heavy 12 three times a week. Okay. And it was a respectable 15 sets of calf work. The stretching protocol consisted of a tool assisted calf stretch.

Speaker 1: [00:04:25] So there has to be an image for this. I don’t have one on me right now, but it was one hour per day and the pain score was 7 to 8 out of ten intensity. So imagine stretching your calves for one hour per day at a pain score at eight out of ten intensity. That would be fucking agony. So the protocol here, the differences we’re looking at is three times a week training basically 15 minutes doing calf raises on a leg press. And then the other protocol is stretching for an hour a day. You know, my question to you here is they are saying. You can get equal benefits from either of these two is would you rather do you know a couple of sets of calf raises three times a week? Or would you rather stretch your calves for one hour? For me, like the protocol isn’t valid or reliable or like an equal measure because you’re not doing one hour of strength training versus one hour of calf stretching. Therefore, you know, yeah, the results they found are pretty similar. But it’s not the same thing. It’s a completely different thing. You know, they said this study is another win for stretch mediated hypertrophy. But in terms of actually the use of stretching to get jacked, the researchers concluded the practical applications seems to be strongly limited as a weekly stretching duration of up to seven hours, compared to three by 15 minutes of resistance training is a lot of time spent.

Speaker 1: [00:05:51] What do you guys think? Let me know on Instagram. Send me send us a message at Helix Gym. Let me know what you think of this study. For me, I’m just going to stick with calf raises to get massive calves. I’m not going to sit there and stretch my calves in a fucking medieval calf stretching torture device. Literally. It’s like a I’d imagine. It’s kind of like a stiletto style thing, an opposite stiletto, a reverse stiletto, where you’re in that position, where your knee is over your toe or past your toe. You’re doing a let’s say you’re doing like a knee to wall stretch. You’re kind of holding that thing with some medieval torture contraption for an hour. That sounds fucking Aids. That sounds terrible. My. Yeah. My final question on this is like, are the scientists board and trying to prove stretching is the goat, or should we just stick to conventional ways of getting jacked, aka doing fucking weights? All righty guys, we’re going to get into the main topic on the podcast today. We’re talking about muscle hypertrophy training volume. And this is all about sets reps and intensity aka how many sets do you need in a week to build muscle. Is it better to go for higher reps? And what’s the deal with hitting higher loads of 70 to 75% of your one? Mm. Let’s dive deeper into some of the questions that I get literally on a daily basis about training.

Speaker 1: [00:07:13] So we’re going to talk about sets to start. How many sets do you actually need to build muscle. So the research is pretty clear. And this is not one of these scientists that’s trying to prove that calf stretching is the same as doing fucking single leg calf raises for calf growth. But 9 to 18 sets per week per muscle group seems to be the magic number. There is a point of diminishing returns, according to science on this. It’s like any more than 18 sets a week on a muscle group. You know the returns are negligible. Aka you’re wasting your time. But there is a school of thought on this where there’s a lot of top bodybuilders around the world that do way more than 18 sets a week, and they are fucking massive. Yes, they may be taking some anabolics to assist them with their growth, but growth, growth but 9 to 18 sets is generally key. So let’s look at a training program. So if you’ve got a A series and we’re doing squats four by ten. And let’s say the muscle group we’re trying to target is quads. So we’ve got four by ten. And then we have a B series. Let’s say we have a split squat three by ten and then a C series. Let’s say we have a leg extension three by ten. So we’ve got four sets in the first A series. We’ve got three sets in the B, three sets in the C that is ten sets total.

Speaker 1: [00:08:29] So if you just did that one leg day per week of that ten sets, we would be within that 9 to 18 sets per week category. So what I want you to do, listening to this podcast, I want you to think about is your goal to build muscle? If so, count, count out, write out how many sets you’re doing of each muscle group per week. Does it fall between the 9 to 18 sets? That’s how you’re going to know if what you’re doing is on the right track to build muscle. Okay, training, mechanical tension, hypertrophy, all these types of things are obviously precursors to building muscle. The whole nutrition component is a topic for another podcast. Next up let’s talk about reps. So it has been found the optimal rep range for building muscle is 6 to 20 reps per set. Higher reps generally are more efficient on time. It depends how busy you are. I personally am not one of these people that can just hang out at a gym for three hours a day. I used to be when I was in my early 20s, but then I got a life family. I don’t have kids, but I got four kids and I’ve actually got responsibilities now, so that’s not for me. So 60 minutes a day is my absolute tops for training, so I’m in there to get the most I can out of 60 minutes. Therefore, doing higher rep sets generally is better for hypertrophy.

Speaker1: [00:09:46] For me right now in my phase of life I’m 33, so training for hypertrophy I’m essentially doing it while I can. While my body is still capable of building muscle, I want to build as much as I can before I get old. Then I won’t be able to build muscle anymore. So then it’s just a game of holding on anyway. Higher reps are more efficient on time. So if a hypothetical example, I’m going to prove this to you. So we’ve got ten sets of one. So ten sets one rep and you have a 92nd rest between the total time of that set. That’s an A series is 20 minutes okay. And then you want to flip the script here. And then we’re going to do one set of ten. Essentially you’re only doing one set ten reps. You’re doing the same amount of quote unquote work. Obviously the load is going to be a little bit different that you could do for ten versus one. And then the total training time is two minutes. Which of those two hypothetical examples are more time efficient? Obviously doing higher reps is more time efficient. That is the point I’m trying to get across here is if you want to get hypertrophy and you want time efficiency, higher reps, less sets is going to be key for you. Higher reps, more sets between 9 and 18 is going to be key for muscle mass or development on this.

Speaker1: [00:10:57] And then my final teaching point here is actually learned this when I was doing my Masters of Strength conditioning. I think about like 8 or 9 years ago, but I actually did a what was it, 25,000 word paper on muscle fibres. And if you think about how much 25,000 words is, it’s a fuck ton. This was before you could just cheat and use ChatGPT or any AI tool to write essays and stuff for you, but it was 25,000 words on muscle fibres, and I had to produce 80 references for that 80 individual references, which means you had to read 80 studies around muscle fibres. And it was pretty fascinating for me. But what I did learn doing this masters program, that you have different types of muscle fibres, and each of them essentially does different things. So you’ve got. Type ones and type twos. Type ones are low and slow. So you know someone, an athlete or someone that does more long distance running would be type one dominant. So they would be able to go for longer distances and produce less power. Then you’ve got type twos, type twos, strength power. People that are good for a few reps are really strong, really powerful, and they’re really shit at long distance stuff. Okay, me, I’m really bad at running, really bad at holding on for long amounts of time, but I’m quite strong and quite powerful. So if you think about me, if you know me, if you don’t know me, just imagine a strong ish guy, blonde, 100 kilos versus a 65 kilo guy who’s really long, lean and can run like for for quite a while.

Speaker 1: [00:12:29] But the point I’m trying to get at here is to target type two fibres, which are responsible for more growth, more strength, and more power. You need to be lifting loads of 70 to 75% of your one and above. Okay. And this recruits higher levels of type two fibres. So my three points here is 9 to 18 sets. We want to do higher rep training between 6 to 20 reps. And then we want to be lifting loads eventually between 70 and 75% and above to target the type two fibres. So they are my three no no BS muscle gaining advice. And I gave you a little bit of science of getting jacked there. So I want to give one of our clients a shout out at Helix Gym. His name is Andrew Savage and he has managed to drop a whopping 31kg 31 fucking kilos. That is an astronomical amount of weight. Honestly, it’s been nothing short of inspirational. So what he did was he hits our Adonis program. Adonis is named after Adonis after a god Greek god is carved out of stone. Obviously. You know, most guys want to look like Adonis girls. Not so much. But you know, they like the saying as well. He hits that program 4 to 6 times a week. So, you know, some days it depends on how much the man’s running or doing cardio, etcetera.

Speaker 1: [00:13:48] Usually it has six days a week. Now complementing that he during this time he was doing 75 hard. So he was doing a lot of walks and runs as well. So actually on 75 hard he lost 16 kilos. And then in his total journey at my gym, Helix Gym, he’s lost 31 kilos, which is incredible in terms of his nutrition. He’s just doing macros and calories and that’s basically just within the last 12 months. He’s hit those. So Andrew’s a really good, I guess, beacon of motivation. So if you follow us on Instagram, you would have seen his transformations over before and afters. But honestly, like it’s been super incredible to see just getting into a listener question. Now before I wrap up and we have a section called questions with Tim, and this is a question from a listener who has been battling some shin pains. So Shin s h Shin shin. I think it might be some shin splints, but I’ll give you the question and I’ll tell you what I do. So it’s hey, Tim, over the last few weeks, I’ve had some pain in my shins, which is worsened over the weekend, which I’m assuming are shin splints. I don’t plan on seeing a doctor and paying them, obviously to tell them what I already think I know anyway. What should I do to help this? Do I rest my lower body? Do I keep going, or am I just being a little bitch? I love that most of my clients come to me and they ask if they’re being little bitches, which, you know, sometimes they are, sometimes they’re not.

Speaker 1: [00:15:10] Jade’s a bit of a baddie, so I don’t think it’s that. But anyway, many thanks from my little weak legs. So usually shin splints are something that happens from too much impact. So if I think about Jade, I know her training. We’re doing a lot of running, we’re doing a lot of jumping, and we’re doing a lot of impact stuff. If you’ve got calves and tibia that aren’t used to taking that load. So injuries happen when you get a sudden increase in training volume. So what I mean by sudden increase in training volume, if you start doing heaps of reps, if you start doing heaps of running, if you start doing heaps of jumping, if you start doing heaps of stuff that you wouldn’t normally do, your body can’t adapt to that. So this is what has happened with Jade. What I think has happened. She’s had a sudden increase in running volume or jumping or whatever the fuck she’s doing, and this has caused her shins to flare up. So the advice I gave to Jade was keep training, just take out the stuff that’s aggravating it, and that will be running and jumping, etcetera. Once it’s calmed down, what you need to do is you need to get as two muscles in your calf gastroc and the soleus.

Speaker 1: [00:16:13] So gastrocnemius and soleus, they need to get strong. Then the other muscles on the front you’ve got your tibialis anterior, which is kind of your shin muscle that needs to get strong. So what I would be doing I would be starting with some isometrics. So I’d be doing isometric calf raises to strengthen that higher end, that higher range of motion. And then I would be going into slow eccentrics, which is low and slow on the way down. And then I would be progressing that into normal reps as well. Concentric eccentric. And you can do isometrics on there as well. So heaps of ways to do that. You got seated calf raises. You’ve got single leg calf raises and you’ve got tibialis raises with the T-bar as well. So that’s my advice for Jade there. Finally, guys, if you’re not currently training with us at Helix Gym, we have a intro program at 93% off. It’s disgusting, disgustingly cheap. That is disgustingly good for results. So that is going to be in the show notes. Finally guys, if you got anything from this podcast, don’t forget to subscribe! Follow the show, share it with someone that could find this valuable word of mouth is how we grow these podcasts. Actually, I think it’s 64% of podcast growth comes from word of mouth. And lastly, leave a review if you got some value. It’s been epic up until yeah, it’s been epic. I will see you guys next week.