Before we get into today's episode, if you want to actually improve your body composition and are sick of random workouts that just wear you down and burn you out, that's exactly why I build Evolo. Evolo is science-back strength training designed to help you build muscle, improve body composition, and feel better in your body without beating yourself up or living in the gym. You can try Evolo now for two weeks free if you visit evolofitness.com. Welcome to the Dr. Shannon Show, body recomposition capsule. There's so much fitness advice out there, and quite frankly, much of it isn't true. So in this 10 episode series, we're covering all the science-based tools for body recomposition. You may have heard me cover many of these topics before, and some things will be brand new. I wanted to create one organized capsule of information that will give you all the important concepts for improving your body composition, because we know improving your body composition isn't just external. It has incredible benefits for your health, energy, mood, and longevity. I'm your host, Shannon Richie. Welcome to the show. ["Wake Up"] Welcome to episode three. Just because you're lifting weights does not mean you're building muscles. So today, I wanna break this all down in a super clear, practical way. By the end of this episode, you'll know exactly how to lift in a way that truly stimulates muscle growth, even if you don't have heavy weights, even if you're tired, and even if you're short on time. You'll understand myths, misconceptions, and you'll know how to choose the right exercises that actually load the muscle that you're intending to work. So let's start with what true failure actually is. Mechanical muscle failure is the point at which your muscle cannot produce enough force to complete another rep with good form, even though you're giving maximal effort. So this is the muscle's physiological limit. Studies show that you don't have to train all the way to that point. You can actually stop anywhere from one rep shy of true failure, all the way up to about three reps shy of true failure, and see the exact same hypertrophy or muscle game. So the obvious question is, how do you know if you are at failure or if you're close enough to failure? It really does take some practice, but there are a few kind of clues. First is that your rep speed will slow down. When you're genuinely near failure, your reps will not look as kind of like quick and snappy as the first ones looked. If your last rep can be done at the same speed as your first rep, you're probably not close enough to failure even though it burns. Sometimes what I'll do is I'll try to, if I think I'm at my last couple reps, I'll try to lift the weight quickly. And not that I'm compromising my form or using momentum, but I just, I try to keep my form and lift it up as quick as I can. If I physically cannot do that, that's how I know that I'm close to failure. The second clue is that you almost get stuck. Again, this happens to me all the time. If you actually get stuck, then you're probably at true failure. But what happens is the weight doesn't move as easily at a certain point in the range of motion or at the hardest point in the range of motion. You feel like you're grinding a little. The reps feel like they're kind of moving in slow motion. And that's a good indicator that you're either at or very close to failure. And then the third way to tell if you're close to failure or at failure, this is my favorite one, I do it all the time. Do the rest test. And this is something you, I will members know very well. So after your final rep, pause for maybe five-ish seconds and then try to do more reps. If you can immediately do three reps or more, you are not close enough to failure. And that's a pretty reliable test because training close to failure means that you recruit a high percentage of your muscle, including your type two muscle fibers. These larger fibers typically take minutes, not seconds to recover. So if you take a five-second break and you can easily keep going, you likely didn't reach fatigue in those larger muscle fibers. This brings me to an important concept called the stimulating reps theory or the stimulating reps model. This is the idea that the last few reps of your set are the most important ones. The last few reps are the ones that actually drive your results. As you fatigue, your nervous system starts recruiting larger, higher threshold motor units, the ones that are the most responsible for muscle growth and strength. And you only reach those when you're close enough to failure in the last few reps of your set. If you stop shy of those last few reps, you never tap into those larger muscle fibers and therefore the set isn't very effective for muscle growth. Knowing that you really need to grind through those last few reps and those are going to be the highest bang for your buck reps is really important. So I wanna go over these common mistakes and I'll explain why they matter. So the first mistake is breaking mid-set. When you stop to kind of shake it out, you're actually giving your muscles a mini reset. And this is something that's really common if you're used to taking group fitness classes because in a group fitness class, and listen, I've taught group fitness classes for 15 years. So I know in a group fitness class, you're going along with the instructor, you're going along with the class. So you wanna kind of match what everyone else is doing. So if you know the set will last longer, you might pause, shake it out, take a little break and then keep going so that you can keep going with the rest of the class. However, you're really cheating yourself out of reaching those larger muscle fibers if you do this because that little pause lets your smaller muscle fibers recover just enough to delay the recruitment of higher threshold fibers that create the most growth. So think of those last few reps as the ones that turn the key. They only happen when stimulus builds continuously. Every time you break, you're essentially hitting the reset button so you never quite reach the zone that stimulates change. If you feel the urge to stop and take a break, that's actually a good sign because it means you're getting close to the reps that matter most. So instead of taking a break, shorten the set. So just keep going and try to reach that failure point without taking a break mid-set. Even if that means you do fewer total reps, it doesn't matter, right? What matters is we're reaching that muscle stimulus. Another mistake is confusing mental fatigue with muscular fatigue. And I think this is a big one. And this is something that everyone deals with. I deal with it as well. So just because something burns or you're shaking or it feels really hard or maybe you're bored and just ready for the set to be over, that does not mean that you've truly reached muscle failure. So this happens a lot with higher reps sets, especially ones that create a lot of burn. And so what happens is you stop because of the discomfort of the burn. So you stop long before the muscle is actually near its limit. And this is why many group fitness classes feel really hard, but they don't build much muscle because the loads are too light. The sets kind of drag on for minutes and you end up quitting mentally, not physically. Or you end up quitting because of the burn, not because the muscle was truly at its physiological limit. The third mistake is predetermining your rep counts or time in a set, saying like, I'm going to do three sets of 10 or I'll do this exercise for 60 seconds straight. When you do that, you will subconsciously choose a weight that's too light. Instead, pick a challenging weight for an exercise and do just as many reps as you can with good form. You can count the reps, but don't give yourself a finish line before the set even starts. And Evela, what we do is we give you kind of a ballpark time to help you select an appropriate weight, but we always say that rarely will you hit that time perfectly. So we might say like pick a weight that you could do for around 60 seconds. If it's less than 60 seconds, totally fine, but it helps you to select a weight, but then we want you to just go until you reach your muscular failure. That might happen after 30 seconds. That might happen after 45 seconds. It's not about hitting 60 seconds perfectly. It's not about hitting a certain number of reps perfectly. It's about getting close to your muscle failure. We occasionally do a six rep set in Evela, but we always encourage you to keep going if you're not near failure after that sixth rep. The reason I like to cue these six rep sets is because it encourages you to grab a heavier weight. And we hear from our members all the time that the lower rep count really helped them realize that they can lift heavier than they thought. And so they pick up heavier weights and they're like, oh wow, I could actually do 10 reps with this weight. This is probably the weight that I need to be using more regularly. And the fourth mistake when we're talking about training close to failure is using weights that are too light. We need to make sure that we are training close to failure or too failure in under 30 reps. So if you feel like you could do more than 30 reps with the weight that you've selected, it's just not enough load. So now you know the importance of getting close to failure. You know how to know if you're close to failure and common mistakes to avoid when you're lifting. So now let's talk about the part that I know a lot of you are curious about, which is how heavy you actually need to go. You may have heard that you need to lift heavy to build muscle. And when you hear that, you may be thinking a barbell with big plates loaded on each side, you may be thinking pull-ups, push-ups, lots of different things. You don't need to lift super heavy to build muscle. Some body weight exercises can build muscle. You just have to train close to failure anywhere between about four-ish reps all the way up to 30 reps. In PT school, I was taught the strength hypertrophy endurance continuum, which basically meant that under eight reps build strength. Eight to 12 reps builds muscle and more than 15 reps just builds endurance. And there's really no in between. But that's not what current research shows. We now know that you can build muscle anywhere from about four-ish reps all the way up to about 30 reps as long as you take that set close to failure. If you're thinking in terms of time under tension, most hypertrophy or muscle growth happens between about 20 seconds and 70 seconds. So we do see that you need a certain amount of time under tension. That's why I say four-ish, because if your four reps are really quick, they might not be enough time under tension to stimulate muscle growth. So think about 20-ish seconds. So if four reps takes you 20 seconds, cool. If you need six reps in 20 seconds, cool. But anywhere from about 20 seconds to about 70 seconds taken close to failure will build muscle. So knowing that you have this broad range of reps that will work to build muscle, which rep range is best? And honestly, it just depends on your preference. It depends on your mood. It depends on your equipment. So let's break down pros and cons of all of the rep ranges. And then you can kind of decide. And the truth is you don't have to live in one of these. I probably use all of these different rep ranges. And I like to do that because it provides some novelty, but it doesn't necessarily provide superior muscle growth to fluctuate between these rep ranges. So if you wanna just choose one and roll with that, you absolutely can. So let's start with lower reps from about four reps to about seven reps. This is great if you're short on time because the set will just take less time. It's also great if you feel like you get stopped from the burn and you wanna avoid the burn. They also tend to feel mentally easier because there's less accumulated fatigue. This range is great for maximal strength, but it also builds plenty of muscle when you're taking these sets close to failure. I also think that this rep range is typically better if you've been training for, I would say, three months at least or longer. You can do some simple exercise in this lower rep range, like bicep curls or something like that. But I do recommend maybe that moderate range or the higher range if you're newer to lifting so that you get the movement patterns down before you really load them up. But you might find that the longer you train, the more you gravitate towards these lower rep ranges. That's personally what happened to me. So you can always come back to this as you get more trained. Moderate reps. So moderate reps are anywhere from eight reps to about 15 reps. And this is the sweet spot for most people. This is probably the rep range that I gravitate towards the most. It feels really safe. It's not too burny. The load is still challenging. And you get a really nice blend of both strength and hypertrophy. And then we have higher reps, which is about 15 reps to 30 reps. And these are great for beginners or if you're limited to lighter weights only. This range can absolutely build muscle and strength when taking close to failure. It just won't build maximal one rep strength as well as lower ranges. But unless you're in a lifting competition where you need to squat as much weight as possible for one rep, we don't really care. What we care about is that it will build enough strength that will be meaningfully impactful to your daily life and longevity, which if you're taking 15 to 30 reps close to failure, it will absolutely build both muscle and strength. So it's an option if that's what you feel most comfortable with. I will say this rep range can sometimes be tricky because a lot of times you're stopped from the burn or mental fatigue, which we talked about earlier, and you're not stopped by true muscle failure. You can absolutely choose this rep range, but know that if you're not seeing results, maybe it means go a little heavier and dip into those moderate rep ranges and try to truly get close to that failure point. It is important to say that if you can do more than about 30 reps or hold an exercise for longer than about 70 seconds, you probably won't build much muscle even if those sets are really hard. And this is because the load is too low to create venous occlusion, meaning the larger motor units never get recruited. You stop from discomfort, you stop from mental fatigue, not from mechanical limitation. Now I wanna speak to those of you who are 40 plus and you may have been served the menopause content and you may have heard that you need to lift super heavy for low reps to build muscle. The short answer is you absolutely can, but that's not necessary. We have mounds of data showing that you can lift anywhere from that four-ish all the way up to 30-ish rep range, and as long as you're taking those sets close to failure, you can build muscle. Even if you are a perimenopause, postmenopause, as long as your sets are challenging enough, those can build muscle. And this is important to discuss because many women are afraid to lift weights and they don't feel comfortable training close to failure or they don't feel comfortable picking up super heavy weights. So if they can use higher rep ranges and experiment with taking those slightly lighter lifts closer to failure, they can start building muscle and strength. They may eventually start to lift heavier weights for fewer reps when they get comfortable and consistent, but it is not required. So now that we've talked about effort and rep ranges, let's talk about exercise selection. Not every exercise is created equal. To build muscle efficiently, you wanna train one muscle group at a time. This is because each muscle has unique fiber directions and loading tolerances. Combination moves are common in the fitness industry. You think like a lunge with a bicep curl. And those types of movements almost always compromise loading because let's say, let's use that example, your glutes can handle way more than your biceps. So pairing a lunge with a bicep curl just means neither muscle really gets what it needs. So choose movements that feel smooth and comfortable and bias one muscle group at a time. When that movement pattern is stable, you'll be able to take the muscle to failure or close to failure without being stopped by discomfort or distracted by balance or distracted from the feeling of being fatigued and other random muscles. You'll stop because of true muscular failure. In other words, the muscle stops you, not something else. And finally, when we're talking about exercise selection, I recommend using really stable exercises. I talk about this all the time in Evelio and my content, but when you're well stabilized and well supported, whether it's using a wall or using a chair or using a bench or using the floor, your nervous system senses safety. You're not wasting your energy trying to balance. Your brain isn't bouncing all over the place trying to coordinate your movement or coordinate all these different muscle groups acting at once. So you're able to recruit more motor units and take the muscle closer to failure. So stability and using the floor, using a wall, using a bench, it's not cheating. It actually makes the lift more effective and can give you better strength carryover. This is why you'll see us do lots of floor-based exercises and floor-based exercises might feel less overall fatiguing, but they can actually be more effective because of that concept, because you're very stable and so you're not limited by anything else except the muscle. So to summarize everything from this episode, it's not the weight you're holding, it's the rep range that matters. Anywhere from four reps all the way up to 30-ish reps taking close to failure will build the same amount of muscle. It's not about the burn, it's about getting close to that failure point, it's about the effort. When you combine that principle with exercises that truly load one muscle group at a time, they feel smooth, they allow you to push to that point safely, you will see better results than you ever have and your joints and your body will feel so much better. So tomorrow we're talking about how often the strength train and how many sets you need to do each week. We'll discuss minimal effective dose, maintenance, and what is optimal and best practice. We'll see you tomorrow.
