Here’s my newest FREE Meal Plan (High Protein Mediterranean with some Intermittent Fasting)- thomasdelauer.com/MediterraneanFasting/ Please enjoy it as a thank-you for subscribing to my channel and my newsletter!

Rodent be like : "You don't know me son!". "Whose gonna carry the boats?".

I'm imagining rats with tiny benches and barbells doing bench presses in an aquarium in a lab.

sets to failure 2x week per body part and either calisthenics or straight cardio 3x week. 200g of protein a day and at 57 I'm feeling better than I did 10 years ago but I was in awful shape back then. Nowadays it's a lot different. Thanks Thomas.

62 year old here, been training my whole life. What I determined to work the best is: kneesovertoes stretching 10min, followed by Primal / Animal flow 10 min, HIIT Dumbbell Workout 10 min. Do this twice a week with rest day in between. Then once a week I lift heavy, full body 1 hour workout. Best shape of my life, play hockey with guys 20-30 years younger and I'm one of the best on the ice.

It IS fascinating! & thank you for the take-aways. 👍

Thank you, Thomas! I've learned a great deal from watching your channel...and that knowledge has improved my understanding of how to effectively train.

Mentzer was right all along. Even 50 years later. The guy was a genius.

Commenting for the algorithm, thanks for the video Thomas

as a 39 year old male, 2 full body strength workouts per week is working great. I get 2-3 days rest between workouts on average. I've added 15 lbs of muscle in a year and increased all my strength pr's: deadlifted 445 yesterday. Going heavy and resting properly has taught me a lot about how my body prefers to work! For strength, I am noticing a significant lift in performance with 3 days of rest as opposed to 2. With only 1 day of rest I will almost never be stronger on any lift. So 3 days of rest would be like working out on Monday and Friday, with 2 days of rest over the weekend.

Love your content on best duration to build muscle....

This may be your best training-related video yet! And that's saying A LOT! Speaking from personal experience, all of this data tracks 100% with what I've seen from my own body in the last 7 years. 7 to 3 years ago I spent a lot of time training endurance and working on nutrition to fix my gut (it wasn't broken but it could DO BETTER). Once I had my body fat percentage just below 10%, I started about 2-3 years ago focusing more on things like rest and recovery, and less on things like endurance training. The "recomposition" phase 3-7 years ago was all about working out 6 or 7 days per week with higher reps... but the plateau effect was apparent, just as this video states. The last 2 years have been about slowly increasing mass (trying to trickle upwards toward 12% body fat, possibly as high as 15%?) while doing full body workouts 2 days a week, possibly 3. The results have been stellar. Deadlift and Flat Barbell Bench Press days are consistently improving. Same for Squats and Incline Dumbbell Press days. Spending nights at home after work 2 or 3 days a week have been stellar for recovery and mental health/stress levels. It's all kinds of wins! Great video here, great info... spot on!

It's incredible how I learned so many new things regarding muscle building, but in the big picture, nothing new at the same time. Still a very fascinating study breakdown, thanks! 👍

Great video Tom

great vid. thanks.

I think the sweet spot are 48 rest for light training or small muscle groups and 72 for large groups or heavy load

Great video

Fantastic Information..ty

SUPER - ALWAYS UPTODATE - THANKS !!!!!!!!

thank you, this one was really helpful. gives me more to think about, i typically dont give myself enough recovery time because i just never knew how much was enough. I saw great results with Deadlifting 5X a week, and doing nothing else. for the next few months I will try weights 3X a week and cardio 3X a week (alternate days)

Great stuff Thomas! Hey, would love to hear your ideas on how a boxer that wants to gain a little muscle mass to go up a weght class or two without detriment to fast twitch fibre & what type of diet to do it on.

you earned my sub with this video. can't wait to see if they do human trials with something similar to this (besides the ones they already did years ago). would also be good to see if they could add a 144 hour rest group (or longer) to see if there's actually a point where muscle gains would diminish from not training often enough.

This is interesting for sure!

Interested if you have thoughts about strength training for marathon training, with a 3:30 to sub 3 time goal. What would be the ideal strength routine and frequency. Thx 🙏

Hi Thomas, I just recently discovered your channel. Thank you for providing Great info! I was wondering if you would kindly do a video on Vegan Keto Intermittent Fasting including how to calculate macros. I'm vegan and have been for years. I have been incorporating intermittent fasting, I'm interested in possibly cycling with keto, but have no idea how to calculate the macros. I've seen videos where keto people say it's ok to have bullet proof coffee, but then I saw your video that says it actually does break the fast. (So, that told me that my fasting wasn't a true fast.) :-( How could I make my coffee taste decent without it just being black? ...blah! I don't need it sweet, but some kind of something to smooth it out. Thanks, Daniella

You stuff is amazing . Please post more content on muscle building and nutritional amd performance pharmacology

Sooo... is it 72 hours per muscle group or 72 hours period? Let's say I do upper on Mondays and Fridays and I do lower on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Will I be breaking the "rule" in between Mondays/Tuesdays and Fridays/Saturdays since it's only 24 hours (even though I am not working out the same muscles)?

Michael Kamalu aka Dr Gains shared research that in doing dumbbell BP resting at the bottom for 20 seconds between each rep increased strength gains by 60%. The number of reps was 4 in the study.

Over training is mainly down to under eating and/or wrong training split, Full body training is only good for completely novices and we will only use that for conditioning clients completely new to strength training for the first 4 weeks or so, then we start splitting workouts into specific body parts etc, Also big difference between sarcoplasmic hypertrophy and myofibrillar hypertrophy regarding recovery time, so sets/repetitions plays a huge part in time for recovery needed between workouts, but this is at a level most pt’s/coaches will never truly understand, and scientists working with rodents certainly won’t understand,

It's real simple folks, if say you do chest on Monday, wait until Thursday or Friday to do chest again, and eat carbs and protein to grow. Food and recovery days are what's needed big time.

Hey Thomas, would this affect combat sports athletes in the same way? More specifically with training double days

What if you lift different body part areas every day and 48hr rest of the area before you lift with it again? Also 40 min of zone 2 cardio daily prior to lifting. Sauna everyday after reduce inflammation. Is this helping me or hurting me??? 🤔

What’s your take on creatine?

For some of our simple minded individuals, we just wanna know what to do. I personally get lost in the weeds of all the information that you give. Maybe if you give what it takes to get results first and then the scientific background it would be easier to watch and learn from you.

It takes 24 hours for me to be sore! 72 hours at least between lower body strength training. But I'm still a newbie. The cool thing is that ever since tracking my macros and eating around 150 grams of protein a day, I recover so quickly. This is all just so cool. Thanks Thomas!

Long video for what most of us are already doing. REST 2+ days between workouts. I do chest/shoulders/triceps two days later back/legs/biceps work every muscle twice a week and growing and getting stronger. Eat well + Sleep.

Lets get it!

You da goat

So is the desired 72hr break for any additional work out or just on the muscles you hit? I.e. if you do your upper sets on monday to failure, is it undesirable to do lowers set the next day? I see some saying the 72 hours of desired rest only applies to the muscles you worked out, but i see others saying overall inflammation is the issue and you should even separate upper from lower by 72 hours. Im not eloquent, so i hope i effectively described my question. Thanks in advance, i learn a lot of perspectives reading all of your comments. 🍻

Just proves that Mike Mentzer was a true Legend, way ahead of his time!

I do upper Monday lower Tuesday Upper Thursday lower Friday! Is that good?

what the research missed is that the time the 8 hour training group take a break of full recovery around more than 72 hours they will exceed the other 2 groups in both strength and hypertrophy, but, on one condition depends on their training during the sessions they are doing every 8 hours and how much volume and load they have. And thats called Frequency Training, thats why they have both high MTOR and AMPK. I tested this myself on me and on my clients and my athletes. P.S it always depends.

So kinobody has it correct for nattys?

I do upper workouts every other day with lower and abdominal every other day also. ie Monday upper, Tuesday lower, Wednesday upper, Thursday lower etc. Is this allowing enough recovery time?

Is this per muscle group or in general

This is interesting stuff. It confirms what we already know anecdotally, but nice to see a study on it with all the hormones etc. I wonder if the mice were fed in a caloric surplus? If not, the mice training more regularly might be unfairly disadvantaged. In the real world people eat enough to fuel their training and recovery - up till the point when it's unrecoverable, of course.

What if you're switching muscles though? For example leg one day and upper body the next. Would that count as a recovert day for leg? Or does recovery mean stop EVERYTHING

One might think low carb would also help minimize inflammation overall. As for heavy training, I've been struggling with 48h vs 72h, actually. I like to do M-W-F kettlebells and clubs, but sometimes, I feel as though I'm not recovered. I was thinking about taking Wednesdays off and doing something like M-TH kettlebells and clubs, and then doing TU-F spot work. In ether case, if I'm doing weight training tightly to the schedule during the week, I give that a rest over the weekend (when I like to fast anyway, so I do casual cardio.)

Now that I am 68 years old, I need much more rest to fully recuperate. I wait a full four days between muscle groups.

Is it possible that to build muscle you have to work harder and rest for longer as opposed to just "exercising" to maintain muscle and flexibility?

LMNT is the bomb. First thing in the morning for me. Better wake up than coffee and I don't piss nearly as much over the course of the day. As I've aged I have discovered that training "too little" is far better than training too much. Works for me.

if I do a circuit 3 times of 3 sets and 3 reps of bicep curls, dumbbell squats, 1 dumbbell above head for tricepc. One in the morning and one in the afternoon.. that is already too much? even though this exercise takes 15 minutes alltogether?

This goes along with my best workout progress ever. Saturdays I would do extreme heavy legs, Sundays I would do extreme heavy upper body. I would not workout again until Wednesday, the center of the week. On this day I would do my entire body, but half the weight but double the reps. My gains were incredible

What is the conversion of 1 rat-hour to 1 human-hour? I don't think the ratio is 1:1... The results seem to suggest too low a frequency in human terms to be taken seriously.

Eating meat with the fat it comes with increased muscle growth over eating protein by a lot. Probably as you need bile to digest protein. “Together, these results suggest that certain bile acids accelerate protein digestion in the duodenum most likely by destabilizing the tertiary structures of dietary proteins, thereby making them more susceptible to attack by pancreatic endoproteases such as trypsin and chymotrypsin.”

What about like chest/tri's in the evening and back/bi's in the morning? Still bad?

Thinking about what Team 3d Alpha has to say about Nucleos-overload training he developed.

I wonder what their PR’s are you

Can anyone tell me when to take tumeric after resistance training?

I use to work nights ans go to the gym in the day, use to train 3 weeks out the 4 and rest for the week. Always felt bigger and stronger after that week off. Now I'm older, I try and listen to my body more now, if I need a rest I will.

Following mike Mentzer ideal routine, working out once every 5 to 7 days. This means i do the same wo every 20-25 days or so. Each body part gets hit every 10-14 days. Making best gains in years.

Translating that to humans is difficult, do mice recover more quickly than humans being so much smaller? Hence we need even more recovery time? Or is it the other way around, and we need less? In either case sufficient recover time is important.

Does it matter what body part you train on a specific day? Like if you train CHEST on Monday, do you have to wait until Wednesday before you train BACK for instance; or could you train BACK on Tuesday, ARMS on Wednesday, LEGS on THURSDAY, etc? Doing cardio whenever in between.

What happens when you factor anabolics into the equation????

There is something I don't get: does it mean that I should do train lifting in general every 48 hours, or are we talking about muscle groups? Can I train legs on one day, and push and pull the other? My guess is that theoretically it's like that, but has we have a finite amount of ability to recover, regardless the exercise we make, probably if the workouts are hard we should rest anyway.

What about 48hr training?

That’s true sometimes on my days that I have to workout 🏋🏻‍♀️ and I can’t. Then I train two day later I feel more energetic and I workout more then my regular working days

Taking more rest is always good. Its like when you take a week off the gym and you comeback even stronger than before. The nerves need a break sometimes.

Trainer Kevin Richardson swears by training only 3X per week, and he's jacked!

It's been my experience that alcohol stops muscle growth more than anything. It seems to waste it. So, it's better not to do chest and shoulders, and then the back in successive days? We should put a day in between?

How much wood could a woodchuck bench if a woodchuck could bench wood?

I'm in no rush to get big I do one day a week and I really enjoy pushing myself on that one day 2 to 3 sets to failure I'm sore for 5 to 6 days after but I feel much better I'm my daily life and I actually look forward going to the gym for that one session like they say doing something is better than nothing and for me and my needs this works

I don't think the conclusions drawn are accurate across the board. Was intensity the same between the groups? If so, yes more rest is better? What about lower intensity but higher frequency? I've been doing lower intensity bodyweight exercises 5 days a week and higher intensity heavy lifting 3 days a week. Sometimes the workouts overlap. Finding a sweet spot for YOU is key. Train hard and smart. Intensity, frequency, volume, rest, diet, are all important levers.

Body split is also great because in split every body part get 2 full day rest

People have different recovery capabilities and different food and sleep requirements. The study gives an idea about training frequency but finally everyone needs to figure this out on his own imo.

Looks like Mike Mentzer was right all along. 4 days between workouts looks like the sweet spot.

Mike Mentzer is a bona-fide genius!!! 💡

Delauer with the MTor again.

to me this study tells me another thing: that if you train for longevity, training for muscle growth is not ideal, because AMPK (which you want activated) is denying muscle growth. So, you need muscles, but you also need to train for muscle growth as little as possible (workout days with a slight caloric surplus) to deactivate AMPK, and then stay super active the rest of the time with moderate exercise and a slight caloric deficit, to activate AMPK. I'd say that, when you are over 40, you start thinking of weight lifting every 3 days (and enjoy your meals without too much limitation), and do zone 2 training at least 1 time a day the other 2 days, including lots of exercise snacks, while staying on a slight caloric deficit (reducing fast absorbing carbs and saturated-fat rich food to almost 0 would already fo the trick, if you train enough).

Look into Mike Mentzer. He believes we need 4-7 days rest with a very high intensity of only a couple of sets of going all out.

Too many conflicting studies with this. The last studies I heard about (on human subjects) suggested more volume, and training body parts more frequently was correlated to more growth, but with diminishing returns when approaching very high volume.

Sounds like Mike Mentzer was right all along.

After 17 yrs of training I just feel day by day bigger inflammation after every workout ! This study may more important as we think !

@devon larrat hope somebody show this to our armwrestler sensei @john brznk was right

Mike Mentzer is smiling 😊

How about a study on an 8760 hour group?

This is for hypertrophy, how about strength? How about tendons and ligaments?

While this is interesting, it leads to three questions: 1. How do you extrapolate the optimal rest times in rats to that of humans? When it comes to, for example, dosages of medication in lab rats, there is some formula to estimate what the equivalent dosage would be in human beings. What is the model used to infer rest periods in humans from this rodent data? 2. Genetics, as with so many things, can contribute significantly to variability between one person taking a short period of rest and someone needing longer periods of rest in order to induce the same gains. So is it wise to make such blanket recommendations, even if we can accurately scale this rodent data to apply to humans? 3. The amount of months and years that a person lifts can also factor into the variability of optimal rest times. So if we are to make recommendations regarding recovery times, how do we factor in the difference between a novice lifter and a veteran?

I think something really important might have been overlooked here. As obvious as this might sound, life cycles of a rat are going to be significantly shorter than a human, metabolic rate will be much higher, cell turnover likely much higher rate etc etc. The point is, 8hrs in a rat may be equivalent to 24hrs in a human, 24hrs in a rat may be equivalent to 72hrs in a human etc etc. The implications for these findings could be really significant.

I was mind blown at first but this study has a big catch. Since the volume per session was the same for each group, you could argue that the 8h group would have seen more (or even better) gains than the other two groups if the volume per session would have been lower. It is common knowledge that if you train more frequently you cannot do as much volume per session (and still benefit). Therefore, I am very sceptical about these results.

Sounds like this proves Mentzer and his philosophy about recovery ability correct.

Mike Mentzer was right. I grew more with his protocol than with hormones.

Before my home gym I trained 3 days a week, 2 body part a session. With a home gym I train 1 body part a day , 6 days a week . I easily burn out on 6 day schedule compared to the 3 day

Did they test the difference between men and women?

I always wait at least 1-2 day between workouts. Been doing that for decades and look and feel great. Wasted time and overtraining, is what you get when you workout to often. If you do every other day, take a couple days off here and there. Especially if you train to failure. If you are just gong through the motions and doing a set of 20, with light weight, not to failure, then I guess it doesn't matter as much.

I follow the Mike Mentzer way. It works if you are mentally strong enough to follow it. IF YOUR GOAL IS TO BUILD MUSCLE. All form of exercise is AWESOME…I am just talking about if your goal is to build muscle specifically. It is the holy grail. This study only confirms what Mike already knew in the 70’s the man was WAAAAAY ahead of his time.

What stops muscle growth instead lack of protein intake? Plz be straight to the point

And they’ll come up with something “new” in 6 months for clicks.

In the early 1970s we used our Dad's training manual written in the 1930s that came with the barbells he bought in the 1940s. The program was full body with 48 hours between sessions. I still like this frequency. I don't think they tortured any rats to figure this out.

This is the reason why the upper/lower schedule is superior.