How Little Can You Train And Still Grow Muscle? 

Thanks for having me on fellow-real-doctor Mike 💞 Shame the video did not include footage from our mud-wrestling "match" 😟

This guy matches dr mikes vibe and I’m here for it

“But for the ravages of aging…” I’m in that camp. Dr Mike: Please dedicate an RP podcast episode to hypertrophy over 50.

This was really good to see. I normally do 12 sets per muscle per week, but I travel for work and sometimes have to miss a day and can't make it up later in the week. It's good to know that even if I miss 4 sets, I'm still in the range of making some slight gains or at least maintaining. I'm trying to get out of the mindset of "If I can't do it perfectly I just shouldn't even do it at all." It's better to do SOMETHING than nothing.

Mike Mentzer was definitely prescribing the minimum effective dose for growth and development and advocated this style specifically to those with "lives outside the gym". Also his chest and back workout literally had close grip incline bench and close grip palms facing lat pulldowns (interesting enough he said its the best biceps exercise he's done). So essentially choosing exercises that provides the best bang for the buck. This video was great thanks for sharing

for those who don't know, Dr. Pak has a 630 pound deadlift, has recently survived an intense training session with Kyriakos Grizzly, AND he dared to engage the Bloatlord in one on one combat.

The most valuable thing I've gotten from your channel is that I wasn't progressing because I was doing too much, while I thought I wasnt progressing because I was doing too little. My training was mostly low reps high weight strength training, so I would do a lo of sets to compensate for the low reps. I've started seeing progress again when doing half of what I used to do, lowering the weights and slowing down the eccentric. Now strength is going up again.

I began looking into minimum effective dose when I became a mom and let me tell you I have been more consistent and have a better physique now after 2 kids and pushing 40 than I ever did before that. It’s easier to stick to and recover from. Some weeks I’m exhausted and over it but knowing that just getting in a little bit of something will still be meaningful is enough to keep me going. Love this stuff guys. Thank you for the work you do 🙌🏻💪🏼

I'm the strongest and fittest when I train 1 day followed by 2 rest days and repeat. For 13 years of lifting this is what I discovered. Currently training only monday and thurdsday due to the fact that gains are not really my priority currently. I'm still at my peak strenght and haven't lost anything but I do go very hard on those workouts like 1 hour of total annihilation- forced reps ,drop sets , and very intense training overall

Dr. Pak was great because no matter the chaos that Dr. Mike brought, he embraced it and then went right back to the science talk. Tremendous.

As for the 1 of the 1.5 females, thanks for the shout out! 😅

It’s really great to see Dr. Pak on the channel. Super excited to watch the video. I’m absolutely sure it’s going to be full of super helpful information. Thanks for all the amazing videos! 🙏

This is actually very helpful information for people such as myself who has busy schedules or working night shifts or has higher priorities or all of these.

I'm 29 and I do 4 working sets per muscle group per week. High intensity sets close to failure, stretched position and slow eccentric and I get awesome gains.

Love it how you guys are having a respectful and rich discussion one second and absolut rubbish the next. As always, great content! Keep it up.

I was lmao through out the whole video! Two doctors - not only knowledgeable but also have an amazing sense of humor!

Mike Mentzer's Heavy Duty training was big when I first started lifting years ago. And I approached my workouts from the standpoint of doing the least lifting I could do to still make gains. I found that, for me, some muscles just required more sets and reps, but I made very good progress with certain exercises and muscles doing the low volume training. I would normally only bench for 4 sets a week. And in my 50's, at about 190lbs, I was benching 340. So it definitely worked for me in that regard.

All I can say is wow. I’m surprised at this study. I’m also extremely happy they used individuals that actually train. Too many times the participants are untrained. Thanks for this video. Entertaining and informative

these in person inverviews are great, i hope you keep doing more.

GREAT INTERVIEW! Followed him immediately on youtube, I'd love to hear more, or see you and him in the dungeon for leg day!

Been following pak for some time and seeing him getting some well deserved recognition in the fitness sector and now talking with the legend himself dr. Mike is the most wholesome thing

Some of the most consistent gains in strength over time made have been when I've been strapped for time and with real life pounding the door forcing me to train much less than I've wanted to. It's been in and out of the gym in 40 min for 2 or 3 times a week. No more 10 sets of squats or deadlifts but instead 3x5 , throwing in some weighted chins super set with sitting rows or what not.

Thanks for this video, I love the topic and the clear and straightforward advice provided.

Just got out the gym! Love New RP videos!!

When intensity goes up, volume and frequency has to come down. Mike menzers philosophy makes more and more sense for each day!

I’m of the mind that less can be more as you become more advanced. After you’ve developed technique that allows maximum muscular tension in a target fashion, and are able to perform reps with high intensity without losing that desired muscle recruitment, I do believe you can get away with doing quite little weekly.

I really really needed to see this today. Thanks Dr. Mike!

This was awesome! Thanks!

I feel like overtrainig is one of the most common mistakes in bodybuilding. I see these young individuals spending 2 hours in the gym, doing 5-7 exercises with 3-4 workingsets burning themselves out one by another. Thanks you for spreading awareness. I belive body dismorphia has a lot to do with this problem. As once logic tends to say ''Oh, im not making/seeing as many gains as i expected, i better lift some more'' and its a shame. Cus it causes a large portion of these individuals to either quit again, or suffer some kind of injury. Im not a saint, long time ago, I was one of those young individuals. But thanks to you and others on this platform, I have learned control it. And ever since, my training volume and weights has sky rocketed. Thank you for doing this, thank you for.. you.

This video saved me from an early death caused by cumulative fatigue due to the fear of losing gains.

Awesome information! Thank you!

This was a great video guys, well done!

Bravo! Confirms what Mentzer was advocating decades ago with his 'Heavy Duty' training system especially his Consolidation routine of just four total exercises split into 2 days doing one set each to failure. Day 1 -Squats and Pulldowns Day 2 -Dips and deadlifts 💪 RIP Mike

As someone who works a lot and has a family. I train full body 3/4x a week and do 2 sets per exercise to failure. Works perfect and I make great gains. Any sets more than that and I'd have trouble recovering. Some days I skip if I don't have time or feel fatigued. Its about the long game to me and avoiding injury.

Was looking forward to this since the Instagram post, didnt dissappoint 💪🏻

This is a great, great video. Thank you!

Commenting from the netherlands just to confirm, they dont let us leave the gym. In fact I'm typing this from a squat rack

Thanks for the video. Just started weight training about a month ago, but I'm only able to do intense fullbody workout 2-3 times a week. i was worried I wouldn't really see results. this gives me a little more confidence.

Loving these type of videos!

Good knowledge. Keep up the good work

Hypertrophy app has me in the lower end of the 8 to 12 sets/week range. At first I thought this was kinda low, but my progress has been pretty killer lately!

I'd love to hear more about assessing muscle group volume with compound movements. I do a lot of compound movements and it's sometimes hard to assess whether stalling is due to overtraining or undertraining.

Great video, thank you for this.

This was really informative. I always thought it was all or nothing. If I didn't do the full sets and my full workouts, I thought I won't make progress. This gives me motivation to ensure that atleast get my sets in no matter where I am. If not for gaining, I'll continue to maintain the muscle and once I'm back home, I can train hard again. Thanks Dr. Mike and Dr Pak for the insightful talk!

Yea nice to hear this! I got cancer alittle over a year ago now and i´ve been trying to keep up with my training but it´s not as easy to train as it was before. I have lowered my training volume form 5 days a week to 3 but the sets i do is alot harder. I have lost some strength but that´s because im not doing powerlifting anylonger and instead focusing on more brutal torture sets to gain musclemass. So yea tragedy made me go harder each set ;)

Great video! I'm 45 years old and have been training on and off for 30 years. The last year of my life has been very difficult and busy. I'm now training 1 to 2 sets per body part every 10 days and still making gains. It's such a great feeling to know how much I can get out of so little gym time.

This was great, thank you (as always, appreciate the free humour too)

Incredible info and spectacular humor. Please do this again.

Did you guys match on tinder? Amazing chemistry, even better content

Great topic and very usefull. Many people suffer from too much sets per workout. Ωραίος Πάτροκλε.

Thank you, real Doctor Pak and real Doctor Mike. This video is hugely inspiring for me. As someone with a seemingly minimal bandwidth of willpower, I've quit training 20+ times because I just got too frustrated trying to do 15+ sets per muscle group per week, ultimately resulting in zero gains. To combat this, I decided to train at most 3 muscle groups with no more than 9 sets per muscle group per week, with the plan to slowly build up in weekly muscle number trained and sets from there so the relative training volume change isn't as extreme as my past attempts to go from 0 to 100. Funnily enough, "nonoptimal" training with good consistency has resulted in more net gains than my many sporadic attempts at "more optimal" training with poor consistency, all while feeling less effortful. LATERAL DELTS, BICEPS, AND FOREARMS BAAABBYYYYY.... for now (might add Chest next). P.S. - Dr. Mike, please don't look at my custom mesocycle templates in the R.P. Hypertrophy app

Amazing to see someone match Dr Mike line for line and sometimes even leave him lost for words.

I know your mostly focused on muscle building but I'd love to hear your thoughts on strength training and also training for performance e.g sport, fighting, power/oly lifting

Absolutely loving Dr Mike referring to Southampton Solent University as 'fancy' 🤣

Dr. Pak, I loved your podcast with Jeff Nippard. Awesome to see you here!

Great video, great guest!!

I’ve been on 6 sets per muscle group split into 2 full body sessions for like 1.5 years now. Super easy to be consistent with and i’m seeing very solid gains. In other words - agree big time with this video

*Mike Mentzer has joined the chat*

Great informative video. I am curious of where we can find the literature regarding the studies that Dr. Pak talked about. I want to see where the differences lie, if any, by age and possibly geographic distribution. Thank you Mike for doing this great and meaningful discussion.

Great video!

This is great to know. I do landscaping in texas, and for about half the year (Texas pretty much has two summers, a hot one and a really hot one) it is absolutely brutal trying to balance work and training. I pretty much do what i can, when i have the energy to do it during that time, sometimes as little as 2 full body workouts per week (one where i do upper first, one where i do lower first).It's nice to know that that training hasn't been to just maintain, and that I've been able to at least make some progress.

Pandemic was a good test when the gyms were closed. You can pretty much maintain on 30% of volume

Great Content!!!!! Thank you!

The best results iv had in over 20 years of training is training with 1 set per muscle once a week j vincent style. Dont knock it until uv tried it

49year old man here. Went from 155BW to 210BW in one year of training 30min/day, everyday with the following program: Day 1 standing overhead barbell press Day 2 low bar squat Day 3 barbell bench press Day 4 deadlift/chin-ups (alt, every other session) * 3 warmup sets of a few reps, building up to 3 working sets of 5 reps (3min rest between warmup sets, 5 min rest between working sets). Eating >200g protein/day and >3000cals/day. Sleeping (sober) >9hrs/night. Press started at ~65lb and is now ~200lb Squat started at ~150 and is now >405 Bench started at ~135 and is now ~300 Deadlift started at ~135 and is now >470 * Just add 2.5lb to each side of the bar every workout and voila.

I did 17 reps of a body weight squat, which is near failure for me at the moment and I was plenty sore for 3 days after.. now I'm talking ass to grass, full range of motion and my warm up was walking the dog. I am just starting to train again after recovering from a major spine injury and I've been listening to the Mike Mentzer ideas.. I like the way he explains that if you do one set to failure.. that you have obviously pushed the working muscles for that exercise to their capacity in a way.. The amount I was sore felt like major confirmation to me that He's right because if I did more than that once set.. it would have been overtraining. I actually pushed so hard that I felt terrible for the rest of the day. I will be combining isometric holding at full contraction to increase intensity. For calf raises I will hold them at the top for each rep and just do one set until major fatigue.. now I am not leaving off days in between for healing.. instead I am doing one heavy day, then one light day etc. to give my nervous system a chance of keeping up. I think combining different ideas in this way will reduce the amount of time I'm spending exercising as I get back into working out again. I haven't had a protein shake in years lol, I used to be drinking protein shakes almost instead of food but now I am eating steak and eggs every day and loving it.

These guys are an amazing combo on camera!

there's also the fact that you are less tired when you train less.... sounds silly, but for me it makes a huge plus. like, it's as if you can actually feel like muscles don't control your life

Intensity seems to be the key. Along with consistency. I've always felt you need try your best to the most out of each workout like it may the last one for a while.

This is a fantastic topic to really unpack.

I just read the study from Dr. Pak a couple of days ago... Highly informative indeed...

I think Dorian Yates is a shining example for how Mike Mentzers methods are amazing at Building muscle mass AND good for long term health. Look at Dorian Yates today. He is in his 50s and is still healthy and doing Yoga. Compare that to Ronnie Coleman or other older body builders.

Interesting information. I do about 12 sets a week for chest, so from the discussion in this video, I imagine I'm getting decent gains(and I can visually notice as well).

Things are lookin' good, thank you.

I really enjoy your channel. I am a 63 year old man and have been training steadily for 45 years. I really enjoyed this.

I do a full body workout one day a week. 1 to 2 sets per bodypart close for failure. Been training this way for years and Im never injured and my joints thank me for it. I'm 48 and just can't handle the high volume workouts I did in my 20's and 30's.

I think the main factor is whether you are on the juice or not. I used to go HARD in the gym and hit a long plateau. I switched to the Mike Mentzor 3 days lifting, 4 days off and broke through that plateau.

My 11 yr old daughter and I are currently doing Jim Wendler's 5-3-1 which is low volume on the main lifts but higher on the accessory lifts. She has gained roughly 40-50 lbs in strength on the 3 main lifts and +30 lbs on overhead press in 5 months. I'm aware that a significant portion of her gain is due to getting used to proper form and the mechanics of lifting, but I can't wait to see her progress over the next 8 months. For those not familiar, the 531 is designed for slow but steady progress: 5lbs/month upper body (bench/overhead press) and 10lbs/month lower body (squats/deads). Seems like slow progress but if all works out, by next August she should have a 165 lb bench at 12 yrs old. When she first started this with me, she could only bench 60 lbs...now 5 months later she's up to 105 bench press currently. That is ahead of schedule, but with her getting used to proper form we recalculated her max training weight midway through. Does anyone else use the 5-3-1?

Mad smart this dude. And from the Bronx. Listen to this man

I go just two days a week. Three sets per muscle group, I increased my bench from 160 kg to 170kg and my squat from 190 kg to 220 kg in 1.5 years. I think I'm definitely a high response person to low volume, but that sh*t is working like wonders. Thanks for the Info, looking forward to further research down the line.

Nice, I assume those low set numbers are for individuals in a caloric surplus or at the very least eating at maintenance. But what about cutting? How much do you have to train to not lose muscle?

I started with HIT and got great results. Now that I'm more versed in MEV and MRV and maintenance months and getting deeper into RP content, I've realized HIT has helped me hone in on which of my muscle groups require minimal activation to keep around through my rest month.

Dr. __Pak is awesome, thanks Mike, great guest.

Mike mentzer knew something

My main question at this point is necessary volume to maintain. There are definitely points in my training career id just be happy to maintain what i have and not risk additional injury, mostly when im trying to train skill work in something like bjj more

Been doing Jeff Nippard's 4 day minimalist upper lower split and I love it. Gives me time to do sauna after.

I needed to see this video. So many conflicting ideas

holding your breath for 20 minutes to hide belly fat is hard..

If you can notice dependable gains at 5 sets per week, does this mean it's a good idea to start your meso from this volume point? Or even lower?

Wow I used to see Dr Pak at my local gym and here he is.

I think there should be some additional mentions in regards to the effectiveness of minimum volume training. The impact of diet and adequate sleep was not really talked about for this but can have an extreme impact on the effectiveness of minimum volume training for muscle gain. When I was working within aged care there was individuals who gained muscle without training exclusively from improved diet and sleep(aware of their medication and does not cause muscle gain or prevent muscle loss), and this had been the case with some of the malnourished street sleeping adults in Victoria as well who gained muscle mass when given social support and housing. If we are looking at somebody who is a beginner with a desk job, no activity, poor diet and low quality sleep they may be gaining muscle with 0 sets per week purely from improved diet and sleep which will stop at a point yes, but I think it is worth mentioning.

I do full body 3 days a week and Im really reluctant to increase my training and do a split because I'm worried that if I'm lazy or if there are any changes in my life it will cause me to skip days. I feel bad that I'm not making the same gains that someone doing a split would be, but it's good to know it's not significant. 10:54 "This is for you, grandma!" 😆

The mainstream studies are going to end up saying “you don’t actually need to train at all, sitting on your couch is as optimal as training 5 days a week”

Great video.

At a whopping height of 4'10", I am considering myself the .5 lady that watches your channel 🤣🤣

Mentzer was right - generally

Heyyy! Epic! I too once enjoyed Solent Uni. Shit now I have to watch it to the end.

Great video! my left wrist just started bothering me recently i was doing 10 sets of compound movements per session on top of finishing up with 5+ sets of isolation movements and it just got to a point where i had to take alot more rest days than I wanted to I workout everyday and then it felt like I had to deload after every hard session was really losing enthusiasim in the gym and was about to start a bro split to try and let my wrist heal but i will try to reduce volume and maybe increase frequency depending on how I feel really appreciate this coming from a credible source

I could do 2 sets of wide grip super deep dips and be sore 4 days later, already challenging recovery abilities. In fact I did 3 sets of hamstrings total 3 days ago and am still feeling it a bit. People will come around and assume I am following some kind of Dorian Yates volume paradigm when in reality... he actually did more weekly sets than me and I just can't handle tons of volume on certain muscles that are really easy to exploit with stretching.

Something I think that doesn't get talked about enough in regards to overtraining and all those young dudes spending hours on end in the gym making minimal gains, is the correlation between OT and all the different kinds of PWOs out there now and the amount people are taking before a workout. Some of the stuff out there can literally make you feel like superman and make you superficially think you can 'keep going' when in actuality, your muscles are spent and you're likely overtraining.