The importance of reaching muscle failure as a key goal of strength training for optimal muscle growth is emphasized. Valuable strategies for managing workout intensity are shared, highlighting the significance of completing workouts for psychological satisfaction and motivation. By adjusting rest periods and setting incremental goals, individuals can challenge themselves while ensuring they finish their routines, ultimately leading to greater gains.

Additionally, the critical aspects of post-workout recovery are addressed, including sleep, hormone levels, and nutrition. A holistic approach to fitness is advocated, going beyond just lifting weights and underscoring the need for a well-rounded regimen to achieve long-term success and health. By focusing on both the physical and psychological components of training, individuals can enhance their performance and results effectively.

Highlights of the Podcast

0:04 – Introduction to Lifting Goals

00:30 – Importance of Finishing Workouts

02:51 – Strategies for Workout Adjustment

06:33 – Achieving Fitness Goals

09:37 – Post-Workout Recovery

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] All right. So I’ve mentioned several times that the goal of lifting is to go to failure to damage the muscle tissue and to, you know, make it regrow when you’re asleep at night. However, I wanted to make a point on that one. I had a guy I’m working with who we set to work out really intense and it was awesome. And he got about 80 to 80% way through it and failed. Wasn’t able to finish the rest of the workout. Now, that is not a bad thing. And one of the reasons that it was so intense is because he’s really awesome about, you know, making maintaining the rest periods. And so, you know, that changes the cadence of how quickly you’re doing the next exercise, making it more difficult, leaving lactic acid in there and, you know, just punishing the muscle tissue, which is awesome. Manipulating time. You know how long it takes you to do the exercise, how long you take between sets, that type of thing. It’s one of my favorite things to do because it radically, as you can say, radically intensifies the exercise without increasing any damage function from increasing the weight, which is one of the things people do way too often. You know, like, I did three sets of ten, I should go up in weight. Really? That’s the only option you can think of. All right. Well, I would disagree with that, but it is what it is.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:35] The problem is, is that you don’t want to not finish your workout every time. And the reason for that is because as people we get doping checks from checking boxes. Now, the harder the box check, the more dopamine kick we yet. However, it’s one of those things where you still want to be like, I finish my workout today. You know, you want to be the I. I gave 99.9% of everything I had, but I still finished. Like, that’s, that’s the actual goal. That that’s, that’s what you want to do. You want to you want to drag yourself across the finish line and you know, like, what are those things where you get like half your body across the finish line, Like, okay, this counts, I’m done. This is all I got. Like, that’s that’s the ultimate goal. And I think we all kind of know that. But that’s the ultimate goal. So, you know, when you when you do work out and it’s super duper difficult and you can’t finish it, you’ve got two options. You can either decide that this is how you’re going to do it and your goal is to actually finish this workout. And that’s the real goal. And every day you get closer to that goal, that’s great. Or what you can do is you can back it up. Just establish, right? So let’s say that the thing that was crushing you was that you’re taking 90s between sets.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:02:51] . All right. Well, what if you went to one 2000 and 20s, right? Okay. Well, 100 and 20s. You know, you get all the way through the workout, but it was a beating to do that once or twice and then see if you can make it 100 and 10s and then see if you can do it in 100 and back down to the 90. Right. So you’re you’re achieving the goal of an every day. I checked the box. I got the work I done. It was a badass workout. It was super hard. But you also set, you know, time goals in there as well so that you can get a more difficult workout as you go along. But you can still get all the muscle group hit. You can get the you know, if you can’t do let’s say it’s a split day. So you’re doing chest and tri or legs and core, whatever you’re doing and you’re like, I got my chest done, but I couldn’t make it to the tri workout or I got my back down. I couldn’t make it to my workout. Well, that’s bad for my that’s bad for try. That’s bad for core if it’s legs and Courtney didn’t make the core.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:47] So you want to make sure that you make it through the entire exercise but you want to drag your broken ass across the finish line about three quarters of the way and then just lay there and be like, This counts, I’m done. But this is all I got. That’s, that’s, that’s a that’s an awesome goal and it’s very difficult to hit and you know I but again more difficult things that something is the hit the bigger the dopamine kick or the cool it it sure is. I still remember from high school like some of my massive, massive goals that I hit, like when I did that and some of you guys might be able to identify with us, we had to do 300 yard shuttles, which is 50 yards, and we would run, Turn around, Ron, turn around. So you do this, you know, obviously it’s 56 times and you had to make it in ten times your 40 time, which was. Rough on everybody and really hard for some people. Yeah, I was one of those guys. It was really hard for a lot of the linemen. It was kind of difficult for me, but I remember the last time I did it as I was running, I kind of lost like you people are like, you know, get that tunnel vision. Like my my tunnel vision got to like, here. Like it was. I couldn’t see very much of anything.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:05:08] You know, I was all I could hear was my coach calling out times. And and it was funny because, like, I had long passed the you know, they talk about like, like your body will fail long after your mind fails. Like I had long past the point where I was like, I’m dead. I’m going to die. This is this, I’m this is killing me. But I was still able to just, like, force my body to go. And I remember riding across, like, passing him, like, within like a second of when I had to do it again, so. That was the other thing. If you didn’t make it. So let’s say your 40 time is five seconds flat. If you didn’t make the 300 and 50s, you’d do it again. So it was you had to do it until you passed it. And it was just like, you know, my God. Like the torture of that idea was bonkers. And so that was that was the punishment of not fulfilling the goal. And so, like I said, I’m blacked out. Like, I can barely see anything. I can just hear my coach call that number. And I remember crossing it and then just falling on the ground. And it felt like someone who was like squeezing my brain. I was just like dying. It hurt. And so but I accomplished that. I’d made it like within a seconds of I was 49 something or whatever it was. And it’s funny because like my coach comes over and he’s like, Get up. And I remember the first time, I think the only time I told him to go f himself was that day. And he starts laughing at me because he’s like, Yeah, you’re done. You’re done, done. But that was that’s the thing.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:33] Like, that’s, that’s, that’s the ultimate goal where you drag yourself barely across the finish line with the last second to the last rep, whatever it is like you’ve spent all of the things you have, that’s kind of the end. And the easy way to find that goal is to go too far, is to go through it and be like, All right, you know, we’re going to do 90s splits our 92nd race between sets and you can’t finish your workout. And you’re like, All right, cool. So I’ve gone I’ve set a bar higher than my body is ready to achieve and then kind of back it back down to that. Like I said, 110, 122nd mark where it’s still really, really hard and you’ve got to drag your ass across the finish line. And when you’re done, you know, you’ve got to take a second to just breathe before you die. Like that’s that’s the goal. You still want to make sure you check that box. You’re like, Holy shit, that was really, really hard thing to do. That was a was a big goal. Yeah, I barely made it, but I checked the box. I made it.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:07:27] And that’s the thing, you know, like, well, you know, I always just go to failure. Yeah, that’s close enough. That’s where you want to be. Because then you can say, All right, cool. I’d made it 120, but just barely let me do this. 122nd split 3 or 4 times, get a little bit used to it and I’ll start backing it down. Or you can do the whole thing or you’re like, All right, I’m going to do I’m going to I’m going to factor it in. I’m going to do at 119 seconds instead of 120. I’m going to make sure I can get it done again. This whole I got it done at 120. I want to see if I can get it done. 119 is the same thing as I got 12. I’m trying to get 13 reps. That’s giving you a goal that’s just slightly stronger or harder or just beyond the last goal that you had that was difficult for you. And so that’s kind of the idea on the, you know, I’m manipulating the time function or the time between sets because that’s going to be the easiest thing for you to do without increasing weight and thus damaging the radically raising the the, the pressure. And as you raise pressure in a system, the chance of failure goes even higher. So yeah, that’s one of those things that you can manipulate as you’re working through it is you know, before you start touching the increase of weight.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:40] Start manipulating the time factor of what you’re doing and it’ll radically change your exercise, radically change your results way more than just going up and wait a little bit. Will. So if you can break down the you know, how long it’s taken you or how long you’re spending time under tension type of thing, that’s going to be the best, the best option. But again, at the end, you want to be you want to be happy, you’re finished for both reasons because, one, it’s done. And two, you’re no longer beating yourself like that. That’s kind of where you want to be. So if you guys can figure out how to get that position in your workout, then you’re going to have phenomenal gains from that. So like that, that that’s how you check that box and be like, okay, the workout, the fit, the breaking down the muscle tissue. I checked at the highest level, Right? That’s as good as it can be. Great. Now we look at where’s your sleep? Where’s your hormone function? Where’s your nutrient density function? And now? Now we can start figuring out. Okay, cool.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:37] Now we have the rest of the tools for the game. And sleep is probably the one that’s the most important to go to next. So I would spend a giant amount of time once you when you can really kind of dial in your workout, which shouldn’t take that long. I mean, it’s always a moving target, but I mean, exhausting yourself to the point where you have to lay on the floor for a minute. You should be able to hit that. You’ll be able to hit that pretty quickly, you know, because you know where you are. If you just monitor and you journal properly where you’re going to be. So that one should be able to hit first. Then I would work on, you know, the hormone thing super easy, you know, for women, your 82 to 54 men, your, you know, 800 to 200. Unless you’re doing super physiological function and you’re using secondary hormones, which then work with somebody who knows what they’re doing on that one, don’t try to figure it out on your own.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:10:27] Once you get to that point again, hormonal is easy. But the thing you’re going to really dial in that you’re personally you have to figure out how to do is sleep and diet. And that’s going to be your two biggest things. And then obviously on the diet thing. Don’t use calories in your gut. You’re not going to get your goals if you hit calories. You might lose weight. You might gain some muscle, but you’re not going to get the goals you really want because you’re using inaccurate function. You’re using made up silliness on a chemical function, like you’re trying to do chemistry with imagination. And that’s you’re never going to get chemical results with imaginary processes. So that that’s that’s kind of where those who are so if you’re that’s the thing on the working out I wanted to clarify was that you do still want to be able to finish it but you want to just barely be able to finish it. So. All right. Thanks for your time.

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Dr. Matt Chalmers

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