Have your muscle gains stalled? Do you struggle to build muscle as fast as others despite your best efforts in the gym?

Philip (@witsandweights) connects with anatomy expert Justin Cottle to dive deep into the cellular world of muscle hypertrophy. You'll learn why some people build muscle faster, what happens inside your muscles as they adapt to strength training, and how understanding these processes can unlock your muscle-building potential. If you want to go beyond the surface level and truly understand how to build muscle efficiently, this is for you.

Justin Cottle, a former lab director at the Institute of Human Anatomy, returns to the show to break down the science of muscle fibers, the role of protein synthesis, and how our genetics influence muscle growth.

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Today, you’ll learn all about:

2:02 Cellular differences between hypertrophied and untrained muscle
3:37 Breaking down muscle fibers and tissue layers
7:15 Fast-twitch vs. slow-twitch muscle fibers
10:03 The role of protein and amino acids in muscle growth
15:30 The connection between carbs and glycogen storage
20:22 The three types of muscle tissues
24:18 Eccentric vs. concentric contractions and training
28:48 Training variation and breaking through plateaus
32:44 Genetic variability in muscle fiber composition
36:43 Mechanisms beyond individual fiber growth (e.g., hyperplasia)
39:09 The importance of rest and recovery for hypertrophy
45:30 Role of muscle damage in hypertrophy
49:34 Practical strategies and training methods for lifters
52:21 Advancements in muscle growth science
55:50 Where to find Justin
56:24 Outro

Episode resources:

• Youtube: @thedissectionroom 

• Substack: @thedissectionroom 

• Instagram: @realjustincottle

• Learn anatomy faster: kenhub.com

Related episode:

• How Anatomy Impacts Your Gut, Muscle Mass, Hormones, and Health with Justin Cottle | Ep 177

Episode summary:

In the latest episode of the Wits & Weights podcast, host Philip Pape sits down with Justin Cottle, a former lab director at the Institute of Human Anatomy, to delve into the fascinating world of muscle hypertrophy. This episode promises to enlighten listeners on the microscopic wonders of muscle growth, exploring how cellular and genetic factors can significantly influence an individual's ability to build muscle mass.

The conversation kicks off with a deep dive into the microscopic processes that underpin hypertrophy. Justin Cottle brings his expertise to the table, highlighting the importance of understanding the subcellular changes that occur with regular strength training. Muscle hypertrophy, the increase in muscle size, is influenced by factors such as the increase in sarcoplasm and the presence of more nuclei within muscle cells. These indicators are crucial for enhancing training effectiveness and maximizing gains.

Listeners are then taken on a journey through the intricate anatomy of muscle fibers. The episode sheds light on the various layers of skeletal muscles and the roles of connective tissues like endomycium and epimycium. These structures organize muscle fibers into functional units, while organelles like myofibrils and mitochondria play pivotal roles in muscle contraction and energy storage. Understanding these elements is key for anyone looking to optimize their workout regimen and tailor it to their unique physiology.

The episode doesn't shy away from tackling controversial topics, such as the role of carbohydrates in muscle function. Contrary to modern dietary trends that demonize carbs, Justin Cottle emphasizes their importance as a primary energy source for muscle contraction and brain function. Carbohydrates, stored as glycogen, are vital for supporting both slow and fast-twitch muscle fibers. The discussion highlights how a balanced intake of carbs is essential for fueling intense workouts and ensuring optimal performance.

A fascinating segment of the episode is dedicated to exploring the relationship between muscle growth and metabolic processes. The hosts discuss how different muscle types, including skeletal, cardiac, and smooth muscles, contribute to overall metabolism. They examine recent findings that suggest athletes may have a higher basal metabolic rate due to increased organ size, a hypothesis that underscores the complex interplay between muscle growth and organ function.

Genetic variability also takes center stage in this episode. The hosts explore how subtle changes in training can influence the central nervous system, leading to improved performance. They discuss the genetic factors that affect muscle fiber composition and hypertrophy potential, acknowledging that some individuals are naturally predisposed to excel in specific physical activities due to their genetic makeup.

Rest and recovery are highlighted as crucial components of any fitness regimen. The episode delves into the science of rest, emphasizing its role in muscle repair and growth. Adequate rest periods between workouts and proper sleep are essential for replenishing glycogen stores and allowing for muscle repair. The conversation underscores the significance of integrating proper nutrition, particularly carbohydrates, into recovery routines to enhance athletic outcomes.

Looking to the future, the episode explores the exciting potential of personalized supplementation and AI in health and wellness. Justin Cottle shares his insights on how advanced technologies could revolutionize personalized medicine, offering tailored solutions based on an individual's genetic profile. This forward-thinking discussion promises a future where bioavailability and targeted treatments enhance natural bodily processes, paving the way for groundbreaking advancements in health and fitness.

Overall, this episode is a treasure trove of insights for athletes, fitness enthusiasts, and anyone curious about the marvels of human anatomy. With expert guidance from Justin Cottle, listeners are equipped with practical advice and scientific knowledge to unlock their muscle-building potential and enhance their performance. Whether you're looking to optimize your workout routine, understand the role of genetics in muscle growth, or explore the future of personalized health solutions, this episode is a must-listen for anyone committed to achieving their fitness goals.

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Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:01

What exactly causes muscles to grow. If your muscle gains have stalled or you want to get more out of your lifting, you might be missing a piece of the puzzle that even most trainers don't know about. Today, we are shrinking down into the microscopic world of muscle growth with an expert on human anatomy who's seen firsthand what really happens when your muscles adapt to training. You'll discover the intricate cellular dance that occurs with every rep and your recovery, why some people seem to pack on muscle effortlessly while others struggle, and how understanding these hidden processes can inform your training approach. If you're serious about strength training and muscle growth, this episode will show you how to unlock your muscle building potential by understanding what happens at the microscopic level. By understanding what happens at the microscopic level, welcome to Wits and Weights, the podcast that blends evidence and engineering to help you build smart, efficient systems to achieve your dream physique.

Philip Pape: 0:56

I'm your host, philip Pape, and today we're peering through the microscope at the fascinating world of muscle hypertrophy with Justin Cottle, who is back on the show to dig a little deeper for those of us who are serious about lifting weights and building muscle. Justin is a former lab director at the Institute of Human Anatomy. He's a pioneer in using real human cadavers to educate the public about the human body Very unique angle, especially when we talk about lifting and hypertrophy. He's also the creator behind the Dissection Room, a YouTube channel and Substack newsletter devoted to dissecting life, creativity and what it means to be human. Today you'll learn about muscle growth down to the cellular level, including types of muscle fibers, how they respond to training stimuli, what actually happens inside your muscle cells when you use them, and how understanding those subcellular stress and adaptation cycles can inform your training. What can we actually do about it and why? Some people seem to respond differently, based on their genetics, and some people may require a little more effort. So, justin, it's awesome to have you back on the show, my man.

Justin Cottle: 2:00

Thanks, philip, it's great to be back.

Philip Pape: 2:02

And so we're going to learn something new today. We're definitely going to learn something new. I presume that you've spent countless hours in the lab or maybe looking at muscle tissue under a microscope at some point at that level, or at least know a lot about it, and I guess what I first want to understand is what do you actually see when you look at the cross-section of muscle between someone that's been lifting and has gone through hypertrophy for a decent part of their life and someone who hasn't, maybe somebody who's been sedentary? Do we have that, something like that?

Justin Cottle: 2:32

Yeah, yeah. So what you'll see is basically just more space, I mean cells. For anyone who's ever seen like a micrograph or say like a slide that you'd look through a microscope, it oftentimes just looks transparent. So I mean, there's not like this sexy answer of like oh, you can see all these proteins really like in this robust form. I mean, you can.

Justin Cottle: 2:51

You definitely can see when there are more, when there's more protein, but at the same time, a lot of times it just looks bigger, like. What you're seeing is almost like it's just the space which in a muscle cell we call the sarcoplasm. The sarcoplasm is actually just going to be larger, and so what you're just seeing is more of that. You're also going to see more nuclei, typically, just because, as a lot of people in the fitness realm will know, especially like, the more you get hypertrophic, then you're actually going to have more nuclei attached to the cell. So you'll also see that, but it's more about space than anything else. It's just an increase in space and then you will see some more protein as you're looking through it.

Philip Pape: 3:29

So it's kind of swollen jacked at that level already. So you could even just it's a microcosm of what we see expressed ultimately at the physical level or the macro level. Why don't we break that down a little more? Then, when we talk about muscle fibers you mentioned nuclei, maybe the types of muscle fibers when do we want to start this so people understand what the heck's in a muscle? Because we really oversimplify it sometimes. I think it'd be helpful to take that little journey.

Justin Cottle: 3:52

Yeah, by the way, if this gets to be just too much of the weeds, you can let me know, because we can talk on this for quite a bit of time. And I love that we're talking about it because I think every time I hear this conversation happening on the side, the anatomy and the micro anatomy are kind of touched on, but very briefly, which I totally understand, but I think it actually helps really like just justify specific training regimens and things of that nature. So if you actually took a skeletal muscle which, by the way, there's three different types of muscle you have skeletal, cardiac and smooth Cardiac is only found in the heart and then smooth muscle is basically like in your organs. So if you focus on skeletal muscle, if you took a cross section, like, let's say, like you cut mid brachium, so you're looking through the biceps, you're looking through the triceps, and then you like peeled apart the muscle fibers, you would actually see a whole variety of layers, right? So basically you have skeletal muscle cell or the muscle fiber, same thing and then what you do is you wrap that in connective tissue called endomycium. So if anyone's ever like in the literature and they see endomycium, that is the connective tissue that wraps individual muscle cells and then what you do is you put those into like a honeycomb structure that we call a fasciculus, and that honeycomb structure is just a bundle of muscle fibers and then so that's wrapped in connective tissue and then you bundle those together. So it's like you have all of these honeycomb structures all bundled together and you wrap that in another layer of connective tissue called epimycium, layer of connective tissue called epimycium, and you now have a muscle. So a muscle is actually bundles of bundles of muscle fibers. And then you even wrap groups of muscles together with fascia. So people have probably heard of fascia before, but that's just like the macro anatomy. That's what you'd see if you just cut your own arm or you were in the cadaver lab and you were looking at it. Cut your own arm or you were in the cadaver lab and you were looking at it.

Justin Cottle: 5:47

You could then go inside the muscle cell itself and this is where I think a lot of people it starts to get interesting, really exciting, although I will say the connective tissues do come into play in terms of, say, like stress and damage to the cell. So when you're working out you can damage those connective tissues, which is part of just the whole repair process and just getting stronger. But if you went into the muscle cell, that's where you're going to start seeing what are called organelles. So people have probably heard of organs. Organelles are tiny little structures that we all probably learned about in eighth grade biology, so like mitochondria, lysosomes, paroxysomes, but skeletal muscles have a very unique organelle called a myofibril.

Justin Cottle: 6:27

The myofibril is this really long tube essentially of protein, and that protein is what we all know and love in terms of like what we want, right, like the more protein, obviously, the stronger it's going to be. And what you do is you organize in these little contractile units called sarcomeres. So sarcomeres are basically like these membranes and protein bound areas that have a bunch of protein and they all just attach to one another and then they contract and get shorter. And so this is where people might be familiar with, like myosin, actin. These are the contractile proteins. So if you looked inside of the sarcomere, this is all microscopic so you can't see this with the naked eye. You have myosin attaching to actin and when it does that, it pushes on actin and that's what causes the contraction to occur. But you also have to understand that surrounding all of the myofibrils, all of the protein. That's where you get glycogen right, that's where you have all these different enzymes, that's where you get glycogen right, that's where you have all these different enzymes, that's where you put water, it's where you have mitochondria and this is where you start to see the subtle differences in muscle fiber type.

Justin Cottle: 7:31

So if you've ever heard of like slow twitch versus fast twitch, right, like basically the difference there is basically how much mitochondria does the cell have? How big are those mitochondria? If you have a lot of them and they're pretty big, you're looking at a slow twitch or a type one fiber. If you don't have a lot of mitochondria but the cell diameter, by the way, is bigger, in a type 2a or also you'll hear about type 2x, those are just fast twitch fibers. So basically it's like what you're looking for to determine is this cell a slow or versus fast twitch is mostly mitochondria and then the diameter of the cell, and so that's the kind of stuff you're really looking at, although there are hybrids which are kind of interesting. You have, like, some muscle cells are somewhat slow twitch, are somewhat fast twitch and they can change over time based on demand and training, which is obviously really interesting, for you know those in the fitness realm, so it's like and, by the way, slow and fast twitch, they get their name for exact reasons you probably suspect.

Justin Cottle: 8:33

It's just how fast does that do the proteins contract? And there's a whole variety of factors that go into that. And, by the way, like all that I've just said is touching the surface, there are countless other structures that are in and around the cell itself. But I mean, from a micro anatomy perspective, those are probably the need to knows right, like it's based on protein. It's based on how fast those proteins contract and the diameter of it and then around those proteins, how much glycogen, how much water, how much mitochondria is stuffed in there, and that's pretty much what determines if something is going to be you know that fiber is going to be growing strength wise, or if it's going to actually just be increasing in size, which would we would pretty much just call hypertrophy.

Philip Pape: 9:16

Okay, I'm drawn in, man, I could just let you keep going. Literally you could take over the podcast talking about this, because, yeah, if anybody's taking a biology class, they know it can get so complicated, and I'm sure you could do an entire semester on just skeletal muscle and actually that'd be fascinating for me, I think, but just at a high level. So so we recap what we're saying here is there's kind of multiple layers here. There's muscle cells, they're bundled into fibers, they're bundled together, there's bundles of bundles grouped with fascia and then down at the lowest level or one of the lowest levels within the cell, we have these organelles, especially myofibril, a tube of protein, and so that is correlated with strength and also contraction because of the myosin and actin, and then surrounding that is some glycogen and water.

Philip Pape: 10:01

I think I kind of got what you were saying. So it leads to some follow-up questions, because what I really want to connect is what do we do about this? Right, we can geek out on it all day, and I've got some interesting follow-ups here that I didn't expect to ask. So the first one is with the protein. People think about consuming protein, get that breaking down into amino acids, and then how does that get back to these proteins in the muscle, because it's not like it doesn't just travel there and then become muscle tissue. There's some synthesis going on. Can we just briefly?

Justin Cottle: 10:31

discuss that process? Yeah, absolutely. So this is where you start to hear. There's a lot of talk these days about the mTOR pathway if anyone's ever heard of like TORC1, torc2. This is a really fascinating pathway, not just even for, like muscles health, but I mean just cellular health. It's about protein synthesis. It's interesting just for longevity purposes. So you know, those in the longevity sphere are just really excited about mTOR. Mtor stands for what is it? I think it's mammalian target of rapamycin.

Justin Cottle: 11:00

The point here is when you digest proteins right, so digesting is literally just breaking apart the proteins. Most proteins your body can't absorb at the size they are. So you have all these enzymes that break the proteins down into amino acids, and so those amino acids are going to be the building blocks of protein. And there's no at least to my understanding, we still haven't found any kind of targeted type of protein. What I mean is eat this protein, these amino acids will build this muscle or reinforce this specific area. Instead, what happens is the amino acids are distributed throughout the body based on demand, and that demand is based on environmental influence. So obviously, if you are working out a muscle right, if it's under tension, you have all of this micro damage and micro tears. That's a signal that we need to reinforce it. And there are certain amino acids that are going to be better for protein synthesis. I mean I would imagine a lot of your audience is going to be familiar with, say, leucine for example. So you're talking like these are your, you know your branch chain amino acids. Those are going to be fantastic with the mTOR pathway to synthesize more protein.

Justin Cottle: 12:06

So basically what happens is these amino acids go into the myofibril and what they make is more myosin and actin. And the more myosin and actin you have in theory and I say in theory because it's there's a little bit of nuance to this but the stronger the muscle is going to be able to get. And basically strength you could actually say very specifically is how many actin or thin filament proteins are around the myosin protein. So in human beings, if I'm remembering correctly, I think it's six. So basically a myosin protein has two heads to it and then around it you have six different options for it to actually bind to. In human beings that number varies when you go in the animal kingdom and some creatures including insects, if I remember correctly have a wide variety or larger number of actin and thin filament, which means there's more options for the myosin to attach to, and it actually equates to more strength. That's why, like insects are just dramatically stronger for their body weight than you are right. You?

Philip Pape: 13:17

can't lift. Oh yeah, allometric scaling yeah yeah, we'll talk about that, right, sure.

Justin Cottle: 13:21

So the point, though, is that's what the amino acids do. So the amino acids are basically you can't make more skeletal muscle cell right. You're essentially born. There's always debate, but, generally speaking, you're born with as much skeletal muscle as you're ever going to have. What's changing is going to be the amount of nuclei on those cell and the protein inside of it, and that's what the amino acids go to, and those branched chain amino acids and everything it just protein synthesis, reinforces and builds myosin, actin, other proteins in there, like titan, nebulin. There's so many varying proteins inside of there that are all being just fueled and built together in response to environmental damage.

Philip Pape: 14:00

Cool. And if we man I can go off so many tangents If we took someone and just completely eliminated, say, leucine from their diet and got all the other amino acids, what would happen?

Justin Cottle: 14:11

That's a really good question. I'm not even sure I have a great answer for you, I would say.

Justin Cottle: 14:17

I mean, the thing is, the human body is extraordinarily adaptable. So you know, you have to just think about it in this really broad perspective, that basically and we might have even talked about this on our last episode, I forget that I like to think of humans as being more opportunivores, in the sense that we eat whatever we can eat whatever we can, and your body is ridiculously good at extracting nutrients from things that don't seem very nutritious, and so I wouldn't be surprised and I don't know off the top of my head, I'll be completely honest with you if we have ways of converting for leucine or other pathways that can adapt, I'm pretty sure that's the case, but at the same time, it's not a good thing. Right, like, leucine is important and you want that, and I know you know, especially for your audience. We're talking about optimization, and so that's where leucine is going to be very important, but I don't want to make it seem as though you're going to fall apart without it.

Philip Pape: 15:07

Yeah, yeah, I love these thought experiments, because when you go, people usually ask the other way, like, well, I'm trying to get more leucine because I know how important that is, how important is it really? And obviously we're not. So the thought experiment is go the other direction and if you completely eliminated it, because you know more of the research now is showing us that really getting the total protein is where it's at and we shouldn't necessarily overthink the sources, as long as we have a diverse diet, like you said, opportunivore, just eat a good variety and you should be good. So the proteins okay. So that's really cool that we can't make more muscle cells, skeletal muscle cells, but we have more nuclei. So we'll get back to that.

Philip Pape: 15:41

Two other things you mentioned. One was the glycogen, and that brings to mind carbs, and every time I put out an episode that's like carbs aren't the problem or carbs are okay for you, you get all the hate, like all the YouTube hate, like how dare you? Carbs are terrible, you need to cut carbs. Anyway, I don't want to make this a carb loving episode, but what is the relationship between carbohydrate, sugar, glucose consumption and the glycogen you're referring to supporting our muscles?

Justin Cottle: 16:07

First of all, I can totally empathize with you on that. Like in these days, if you even minorly support carbohydrates, it's a hot button topic. So glycogen is glucose, it's just the storage form of glucose. You have to understand that when it comes down, we go back to slow twitch versus fast twitch Mitochondria. They use oxygen to convert glucose, as well as fatty acids, as well as lactate, into ATP. Atp is the energy currency of the body. So what's nice is slow twitch is filled with mitochondria, just filled with mitochondria, which means if you are actually using slow twitch muscle fibers, you're not really working out. Basically, you are not in an anaerobic state. There's plentiful oxygen. Slow twitch muscle fibers primarily burn fat and so it's when you start doing more explosive or high demand activity that you're going to start contracting more of the fast twitch fibers, and these are anaerobic, meaning that they don't really utilize oxygen. There's mitochondria in there, but I mean, compared to the slow twitch, they don't. Instead, what they utilize is another pathway called glycolysis.

Justin Cottle: 17:20

Glycolysis happens in what's called the sarcoplasm. So again, if you had like the diameter, if you like, took like a cross-section of a muscle cell, all the space where you all the little organelles are floating in that's called the sarcoplasm and there's a fluid in there called cytosol, and that that in there is where chemistry occurs, basically a glucose molecule. So a sugar molecule is broken down into pyruvate. We don't need to get into the actual biochem here. The point is you get energy but you don't get a lot. This is one of my favorite things. Like if I took one glucose molecule and put it into the glycolysis pathway, you get two ATP. But if we kept that process going and you were able to give it to a mitochondria, you would end up with 36 ATP for that same one glucose molecule.

Justin Cottle: 18:11

So that means with oxygen you get more energy. Without oxygen you still get energy, but not enough. So what that means is fast twitch fibers are relying on an anaerobic pathway. They don't get as much energy, so they need more glucose to pull from to try and get energy in those times of high demand. What this means is you need glucose. There is no ifs, ands or buts. Glucose is the fuel source for your fast twitch muscle fibers, right? So they're like your type 2X fibers. Specifically, those fibers need the glycogen and they just have this, all these storages of it that they can pull from and then they can metabolize, they can get the energy, the ATP, they need for that muscle contraction. It's so important. If you did not get glucose in your body, your liver would do what's called gluconeogenesis, and gluconeogenesis is where your liver is like I'm going to start destroying other parts of your body to get the glucose.

Justin Cottle: 19:12

So the idea that we don't need glucose or we can operate without it, I mean, I think that's a modern convenience thing. Right, it's something that we just. This is where nutrition gets fun. It gets interesting and exciting. We're talking more about a biohacking perspective, but I mean very explicitly your body needs carbs. Carbs are essential. It's what red blood cells operate off of. It's what fast twitch muscle fibers operate. Red blood cells operate off of. It's what fast twitch muscle fibers operate. Glucose is what your brain runs off of. So you need glucose, and glycogen is just how you store it.

Philip Pape: 19:43

Yeah, I think it's fascinating. You'll still get people who are sticking to the like. Well, your body can convert or can use fat as its primary storage mechanism, but then when you look at studies comparing two groups of bodybuilders in a surplus, the one that has higher carbs tend to build a lot more muscle, and there seems to be a reason for that. So I think that's important. I love the way you put that, really the whole conversion mechanism and the pathways too.

Philip Pape: 20:05

We recently did an episode about the three pathways. You know the ATP-CP and then glycolytic and then the other one, the aerobic pathway, but whatever the name is, and they kind of all work together. So if you're lifting heavy or even if you're doing intense exercise or HIIT type cardio, it all kind of draws on that and why we need glucose, okay. So the other thing you mentioned just very briefly early was the three types of muscle and you mentioned skeletal, cardiac and smooth, and the smooth is associated with organs. I want to touch on that quickly because recently Macrofactor put out a review of lots of the BMR literature and they found that athletes at rest have a higher BMR than non-athletes accounting for body composition, and they suspect it's due to higher organ size and that organ size has been increased through their activity, through being an athlete Not born that way, necessarily, but they've actually grown their organs and I want to ask you about that what do you think when it comes to metabolism and muscle around organs, the smooth muscle is there a correlation there?

Justin Cottle: 21:05

That is really fascinating, and now I want to dive into that myself. I hadn't heard that, and I mean, just like my instant reaction is it's not all that surprising, that makes sense. But it's really, really interesting because, I mean, smooth muscle is fundamentally different than skeletal muscle, though, and I think, like this is something that's worth diving into real quickly. Like, both cardiac muscle and skeletal muscle are what we call striated. Striated means like if you actually looked at you again, you can see the proteins and they look striped. That's what striated means Cardiac muscle. It does it differently than skeletal muscle, but they're both striped.

Justin Cottle: 21:40

Smooth muscle isn't. Smooth muscle is basically like you have cells that are next door to each other and they form sheets, and then what you can do is you can mold that sheet into like a tube shape or like into a stomach shape, into a bladder shape. Like, smooth muscle is the type of muscle you put places that you don't want to think about that action right, you don't want to voluntarily like how annoying would that be if you had to manually release your stomach, move things through your intestines? The smooth muscle exists to contract, but what that means is how it contracts is more through an electrical stimulus and the whole sheet contracts at once.

Philip Pape: 22:18

That is so cool. Okay, I never thought of it that way because it's involuntary and it all contracts at once because it's a big sheet. Also, just so people know, if you eat organ meat, if you've ever had heart, it's very much like other muscle tissue and that makes a lot of sense because it's striated. Throw it in some chili, you hardly notice it's there. But if you got a little liver, you see it, you notice it. Anyway, continue.

Justin Cottle: 22:38

That's really cool.

Justin Cottle: 22:38

So it's like when it contracts in unison, right?

Justin Cottle: 22:41

So, basically, what's happening is I mean, you could literally just you could put this to any shape you want, and what that means is it's going to just contract at once.

Justin Cottle: 22:50

Well, at the same time, though, organs, their function, are going to increase with other metabolic increases, right? So if you're putting on more muscle mass, then globally, there's going to be more demand for, like even just generally speaking, you're going to have more waste products from muscle cells that need to be cleaned out by the kidneys. So, therefore, that would make a lot of sense that the kidneys are going to have to respond in size, or at least in function, and upregulate to adjust for that, and that should happen across every single organ. That's what I'd be interested to see, right? I don't want to make it seem like it's a one-in-one correlation, right? Like? You put on this many pounds of muscle mass, and then your kidneys, your liver, they grow, that's, you know, some similar amount, but it makes complete sense to me that smooth muscle would need to respond, because the smooth muscle is going to need to work harder, based on the just overall global increase in metabolic processes.

Philip Pape: 23:45

Yeah, it's fascinating. It's another reason people can kind of latch on to for all of these what seem to be mysterious reasons that a more active lifestyle also allows you to eat more and burn more calories, which you know is a struggle for people who like. Food is a part of everyday life, and nutrition and just the amount you eat is part of the whole process. Yeah, I recently learned that, and you know, organs make up like 5% of our mass, but they consume half our BMR. So if you could even move them a little bit, it's going to make a difference. So cool man.

Philip Pape: 24:14

Yeah, maybe that's a future topic for one of your uh, your YouTube or one of your articles. Yeah, yeah, so okay, uh, where do we want to take this next? How about contractions? You know, concentric versus eccentric contractions. We talk about different types of training for muscle growth and people always trying to find the next best thing lengthened partials, eccentric only right, overloaded, like let's just overload the down position on a bench press. What are your thoughts on all of that? Regarding what you know about how muscle fibers work, are we overthinking it? Is that like not necessary, or is there some value there?

Justin Cottle: 24:46

My gut. It's not necessarily gut, but I mean like there's definitely research to back this, but I think it's more so an overreaction. You know, I think there's some kind of psychological thing that we all think and hope and expect that there is this secret sauce somewhere. We just got to find that one little thing. And the thing is a lot of times that's true, you know, there's so much truth to that.

Justin Cottle: 25:08

But if you look through and I know you're going to very well understand this, right, if you look through the history of this aspect of trying to find the most optimal way, the most optimal type of contraction, whether it's eccentric, concentric, so on and so forth, it's going back and forth, right, whenever we think we have something, then we don't, and then we have something we don't. To me it's like I mean, we can very clearly say, okay, eccentric is going to, you know that's going to shred muscle tissue Absolutely. However, does that make it more conducive to hypertrophy? Not really, at least not that I've seen. You know, like there's been times we thought that was true, right, people will know like time under tension was just so you know that was TUT, that was an acronym, everybody knew it, yeah.

Justin Cottle: 25:49

And then now it's kind of like well, I don't know about that actually, and that's where it's like to me, from my understanding of the body. It's like it's not about as much as I wish there was some optimal type of contraction. It's more so about just diversity, and that's always what it seemed to me, right, it's not that you're only doing eccentric or mostly doing eccentric, it's okay, it's. You're doing full range of motion, right? You're doing concentric, you're doing eccentric, you're doing isometric, you're looking for diversity with this, you're getting creative with it, right? Like if you're stuck in the pattern, if you're just sitting there doing the same routine over and over, obviously your muscles are going to adapt and so you need to break that routine.

Justin Cottle: 26:31

To me, it's all about diversity. And so when you add that diversity with individuality right, as any coach will tell you then it's like okay, well then I also have to take it person by person. And as much as we want this like cookie cutter, like this is the rules. That here's your 10 commandments. This is exactly what you do.

Justin Cottle: 26:44

The body just doesn't work that way, and muscle tissue very much doesn't work that way. It's meant to respond to specific demands and then it gets used to them, and so you have to be able to surprise the muscle in certain ways. But at the same time, there's obviously general guidelines that are true, right, like you know it's, there's certain activities that are going to be a little more targeted for fast twitch versus slow twitch. There's all sorts of things that you can work within, but in terms of, like, concentric and eccentric and those things, I've just personally felt like we've been overthinking it, like the everyone's been overthinking it for a long time yeah, okay now, that's good to hear, and we also know the eccentric makes you sore like sore as hell.

Philip Pape: 27:24

You know, if you do too much of it, like if you do a bunch of air squats, you're're going to get sore and the benefit may be minimal depending on if your body's totally used to just doing body weight movements.

Jerry: 27:35

I just wanted to give a shout out to Philip.

Jerry: 27:37

I personally worked with Philip for about eight months and I lost a total of 33 pounds of scale weight and about five inches off my waist.

Jerry: 27:46

Two things I really enjoy about working with Philip is number one he's really taking the time to develop a deep expertise in nutrition and also resistance training, so he has that depth. If you want to go deep on the lies with Philip, but if also if you want to just kind of get some instruction and more practical advice and a plan on what you need to do, you can pull back and communicate at that level. Also, he is a lifter himself, so he's very familiar with the performance and body composition goals that most lifters have. And also Philip is trained in engineering, so he has some very efficient systems set up to make the coaching experience very easy and very efficient and you can really track your results and you will have real data when you're done working with Philip and also have access to some tools likely that you can continue to use. If all that sounds interesting to you. Philip, like all good coaches, has a ton of free information out there and really encourage you to see if he may be able to help you out. So thanks again, philip.

Philip Pape: 28:48

I want to challenge, maybe, or hit on something you said about muscle surprise or and I know other terms have been used, like confusion and shock and everything, and I want to separate the bro stuff from the reality, because you talked about not getting stale, not hitting that plateau, and the first thing that comes to mind to me is how people, in my opinion, too often change things up, don't make enough progress and, for example, if you do a bench press and the next time you add five pounds, that's also different, like that also causes adaptation, even though it's the same movement. So where's the separation on? Let's be consistent for a while with our training and actually do the same movements and progress on them versus we need to change and our bench press is stalling, so let's move to a pause or a closed grip or tricep work. You know what I mean.

Justin Cottle: 29:34

Yeah, absolutely yeah. You hit the nail on the head right Like the bro. Science with this can really take over if we're not careful. And so, for most people, most of the time, stick with your routine, stick with what's working, because it's going to continue to work, and you'd be surprised at how long often it's going to continue to work. And you know, it's like a lot of times we talk about at the extreme levels or the opposite ends. The extreme ends, you know, we're talking about the elite of the elite. That's when they you start seeing these pretty interesting plateaus, and it takes a lot of cognitive effort and time and experimentation to figure out how do we break that plateau. That's not most people. At the same time, though, there's genetic factors, there's individual factors, there's dietary factors, there's all sorts of things that can just kind of come out of left field and all of a sudden can stall out a little bit here or there.

Justin Cottle: 30:18

And what I mean by surprising the muscle, it's like I'm more talking neurologically where it's like, you know, if you think about it, like you're just getting this repetitive action potential being sent to the sarcolemma. So the sarcolemma is the outside of the skeletal muscle cell, and then you have a neuron that's right on the other side of it. So this, that location where the neuron is communicating with the sarcolemma, is called the neuromuscular junction. That's where acetylcholine is, you know, transverses the cleft. And then what I mean here is, like when we're talking about like just how a signal is sent.

Justin Cottle: 30:50

You know, sometimes a quick little jolt, a little bit of a change can actually alter this enough to where you can start playing with motor units in subtle ways. That can almost I don't want to say trick, that's not the right word but it can influence your central nervous system to start maybe trying new things, maybe sending more motor units or more prolonged action potentials. So it's more of like you are just neurologically being diverse, as opposed to like changing your routine from the ground up. Right, it's just it's being willing to play with it. And oftentimes you said it add five pounds, right, like you know, it's like maybe you're just adding a little bit, you still do the same routine. It's those incremental progress can be enough too, can also definitely do it. So it's not like you need to change everything and, just like you know, basically go out in the woods and just like chop wood and do all this kind of stuff.

Philip Pape: 31:39

Yeah, no, I love the phrase neurological surprise. I'm going to steal that in the future and give you credit for it, because that's a really good way to put it. It reminds me of a form of training that I've done in the past and I'm probably going to do again, influenced by Westside Barbell, louie Simmons, back in the 80s. These were powerlifters, but my coach has a programming style based on that, and on two days of the week max effort days you actually test a 1RM, the day's 1RM, not your max PR, but what is the 1RM at that moment? Even if you're in a fat loss phase, you don't have as much energy and you've lost weight. What is your 1RM in that moment?

Philip Pape: 32:13

And then you do some back offsets, but the key is, over about six weeks you're rotating the variance of that lift.

Philip Pape: 32:20

So every Monday if you're doing, you know, back squat, this week you're going to do a pause back squat and then a box squat and then a front squat, and you're basically rotating with the idea of being that if you kept doing the same one, you would get so fatigued and the adaptation wouldn't be worth it anymore. It just kind of reminds me of that, right, because even that's a subtle difference in the movement, but it's enough, like you said, to unlock something going on with the motor units. I think that's awesome, that's really cool. Okay, so you mentioned the variability between humans in part of your answer there, the genetic differences, and I know we got into that last time how any one thing that you examine in the human body could have on the record, you know, 15 variants but in reality 200 or infinite permutations. How does that play out when it comes to, I guess, muscle fiber composition and but hypertrophy potential, specifically like the genetic variance between people?

Justin Cottle: 33:12

Yeah, that's a great question. So, like I mean broadly speaking, I was thinking about this in, like in just preparation for, you know, our interview, where I was like if I could just say, like, what are the four things? Well, there weren't four at the time. I've narrowed it down to four things, 22 things. Like hypertrophy, just broadly speaking, just means the cells getting bigger, and so if you add more protein, then it's obviously going to get bigger, which means if you're actually training for strength, then you're obviously getting hypertrophy. But that's not what we really mean, right, like we're talking an increase in cell size. So basically, the four things that make hypertrophy right is an increase in protein, an increase in the sarcoplasm, so like glycogen, mitochondria, things inside of the cell, inflammation which comes from I mean, like everyone knows this you get swole, right. So you're just literally going to engorge. But also during the repair process. And then satellite cell activation, right, the cells on the side that lend their nuclei to make the cell actually bigger. But what's interesting about that is every single one of those has genetic variability, right? How well do you, you know, build your sarcoplasm? How well do you build protein? How many satellite cells do you have available to you, which is likely predetermined at birth, right, like you think about, like some bodybuilders, just no matter what, are going to be better than everyone else. There's just, there's nothing that could possibly, there's no hurdle that you could cross, that it would get closer to them and it could just be they have more satellite cells available to them, so they have more myonuclei, and therefore it's just.

Justin Cottle: 34:42

There is these types of variabilities with it, with skeletal muscle type, right, like that goes. That goes into the fiber, I mean into the protein amount. Some people will have a higher density of slow twitch. Some people will have a higher density of type 2a or 2x or more hybrid fibers. I am not super clear on like. In terms of like, I imagine there's probably ethnicity differences. I imagine that there's just geographical differences, but I'm not. I don't want to give anyone bad information, but at the same time, it's like there are clear differences with this, and we see this in athletics. Right, you don't have to look anywhere else outside of athletics to just see that some people it's like their body's built for explosive movements, like it's just like they do it better. Well, that's probably because they do. They have probably more 2x fiber and they are literally contracting faster than you and there's no amount of training that you could ever do to overcome that.

Philip Pape: 35:34

Before you go on, I'm sorry. I was talking to my wife last night about a kid we grew up with and he was like half my age and he could just fly barefoot on the asphalt and he can run. It wasn't even believable how fast he could fly and you're like that. There's something genetic there. Anyway, continue.

Justin Cottle: 35:49

I totally get it Like. It's just, some people are better at certain actions, and that's okay, right. That doesn't mean that you can't be great. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't strive for the best you can do. It's just we all have these genetic limitations. They definitely exist with fiber type.

Justin Cottle: 36:02

What's fascinating to me, though, is, you know, if you went back 20 years, we used to think like you couldn't even change your fiber type at all, and now we're like, wait a minute, training can actually change fiber type. Maybe it's more subtle, maybe it's not that big for most people, and you really only see that those gains at the ends of the extremes of the spectrums. But at the same time, it's like it's amazing to me how much we've learned in just the past 10 years around fiber type and what can actually change based on training, and I don't want you to think like, if you're have more slow twitch, that you're going to not be able to do, you know explosive type workouts. At the same time, though, I mean you are going to be limited to some extent to how good you can get for sure.

Philip Pape: 36:44

Yeah, I think was it our conversation? I think it was last time. We talked about how, if you look at the world of athletics, there are so many types of sports and the ways that you use your body that you may be optimal for one and may not even know it, unless you try different things right. And some people maybe luck out and they grow up and they love something because they're good at it. But I do like the more powerful message that, okay, there's this range, there's variability between humans. Some people are on the outliers and they're going to be elite. Fine, maybe you're not trying to do that. You just want to look great, feel great, perform great, maybe enjoy some sports and there's something you can do about it. And so one thing is the fiber type. What would you say is the other thing, or two out of those four areas protein, cycloplasm, inflammation and satellite cell activation that we have the biggest impact over?

Justin Cottle: 37:33

I mean, like, when it comes to inflammation and repair, I mean that's obviously going to be just like how you rest, right. I mean this just goes to show, just like that's a good one.

Philip Pape: 37:37

Let's talk about that.

Justin Cottle: 37:39

It's always surprising to me how I love that things have changed. Right, like rest and its understanding of the importance of rest has really started to make some changes, but I still think there's a lot of significant work that needs to be done with it in terms of, like, even just resting in between sets, like we can take, like just talking about in your workout, versus, okay, are you resting for 24 hours, 72 hours? How are you cycling through muscle groups? You know, is it upper, body, lower? But like, there's all this nuance to it.

Justin Cottle: 38:04

But rest is so important because this is how you replenish glycogen storages.

Justin Cottle: 38:09

This is how you because if you destroy I say that maybe not destroy if you injure the muscle tissue through micro damage, through micro tears, right, you have the lactate, you have all this stuff.

Justin Cottle: 38:20

It takes time to rebuild that stuff and you want it to take that time and you want to give your body that time because you will come back stronger. You will 1000% come back stronger. So you're going to get that immediate hypertrophy from the inflammation and swelling and then it's going to transition into actual hypertrophy because you've constructed more mitochondria, you've constructed more proteins, you've given your body the time to actually adapt to the situation that you put it in right, like if you're changing your routine or if you're just adding more weight or whatever kind of change you're making. You got to give yourself time to recover, and that can sometimes be 72 hours or more. Right, the importance of rest it really just comes down to. You know you got to give your body the time to do what you want it to do and what you are. You know you really are doing when you're working out.

Philip Pape: 39:13

Yeah, there's that. We all have that immediate gratification. And it's funny you mentioned immediate hypertrophy versus actual hypertrophy, because there is a thought of getting a pump, getting sore, sweating, enjoying your workout, all of which can be wonderful things as far as motivators in the moment, but not all of which are necessarily an indicator of what is to come when not coupled with the follow-up action of rest. And you pointed out the different types of rest, which is great Cause I was thinking, okay, we're going to talk about, you know, sleeping and resting between sessions, but let's, you know, start small and work our way up the pyramid between sets. Very important, right, because we've heard we see a lot of people doing the 20, 30 seconds and just like going to the next one, which again, could be effective if you're doing mile reps or some form of like close to failure training and you want to be more time efficient, but it also may not be enough.

Philip Pape: 40:04

If you're doing, say, a deadlift or back squat and now you know you're not giving yourself enough rest, then we have between our sessions in general and then between muscle groups being stimulated across those sessions. It's kind of like an overlap when we do a four-day split or something you might work out three or four days in a row, but they're different muscle groups and then finally recovering your glycogen storage due to all the tearing and whatnot, and that's where nutrition, and again carbs and everything, can come into play as well, as well as not training fasted, in my opinion. So, all of that said, are there like a couple, like big tips I'll call them low hanging fruit for folks that you've seen. They don't do enough of that. Hey, do this, and it kind of could be a game changer on your road to recovering better.

Justin Cottle: 40:50

The only one that really truly comes to mind is something I'm so glad I think we even might've talked about it a bit last time, I think and if we didn't, we should have is sleep, and you just mentioned it. Right now, I'm still surprised at how many people aren't really prioritizing sleep, how many people say they are but they're really not. And sleep is just one of the most important things you can possibly do and I swear, every single month it's becoming more and more important, or at least more and more in the public eye. People are just talking about it more and more, and it makes me so happy.

Justin Cottle: 41:20

It's finding that time to really take care of your sleep is such an important one. But at the same time, just a more lower scale, I would say just taking time and resting between sets is probably one of the easiest ones. I understand that you could get bored. I'm not saying you have to rest. I mean, I forget what it is. It's something like you can go as high as like four or five minutes, like that's like a real solid recommendation. But I totally understand where you're just like jittery.

Justin Cottle: 41:45

You're just like I want to talk, right, but at the same time you jittery, you're just like I want to talk right, but at the same time, you know, taking that time, taking the time to rest, not being afraid of resting, it's really only going to add what? Maybe 10 minutes to your workout. I mean, it's not going to be that big of a deal, but little things like that really go a long way. But that's what comes to mind immediately is just be sleep.

Philip Pape: 42:04

I mean both of those. Obviously sleep. I feel like sleep is one of those unsexy topics. Every time we bring it up, if I make an episode about it, I'm like how do I even title this thing? Because people are like going to skip or delete. I just feel that from people when we talk about sleep and maybe there's a way to make it more interesting and tie it to the result. Maybe you have ideas on that.

Philip Pape: 42:23

But the resting between sets you mentioned you know four or five minutes. I think that's a great recommendation when you're getting started and you're trying to progress and lift heavy and just kind of give yourself the best shot to get all the reps. Because one of the things I hear from newer lifters is I just missed my reps, what do I do? And I'm like, well, don't miss the reps. And the way you don't miss the reps in the first place is probably taking longer rest periods. I'm guessing that's like the thing you're not doing other than, okay, you're not sleeping, you're not eating, you know all the other recovery aspects. So yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one, jess. I did want to ask you about you mentioned the genetic differences. Something you mentioned there made me think of that bull, that cow that's like overly muscular. Do you know what I'm talking about? I don't think it's urban legend. It's like a genetic defect that caused this bull to get like massively muscular. Do you know what I'm talking about, or no?

Justin Cottle: 43:16

I don't. I don't know, Okay, I mean you're welcome to like. Tell me about it.

Philip Pape: 43:20

No, I don't have the details on it, it just came to mind. I remember seeing it and it was like just imagine Ronnie Coleman times three as a bull okay.

Justin Cottle: 43:30

That's the most terrifying bull ever. Is what?

Philip Pape: 43:32

you're Unsettling. It revolts you to look at it because it's so unnatural. But of course I'm sure people look at that saying how do I get the pill to do that for me?

Justin Cottle: 43:41

Anyway, yeah, yeah, I will say I don't know, for some reason, this is what jumped in my mind. Yeah, yeah, I will say I don't know, for some reason, this is what jumped in my mind, just kind of. What's been interesting is there has been a kind of a shift in the myonuclear domain hypothesis. So the myonuclear domain hypothesis has to do with the myonuclei from the satellite cells. So basically you can think of it like this right, as the cell gets bigger and you add more nuclei, the idea is, what we used to think for a very long time was that the nucleus is only responsible for a certain radius within the whole diameter of the cell, and so you actually have a ceiling for how big that muscle can get, because there's only so many satellite cells that you can have and they can only control so much of an area.

Justin Cottle: 44:24

What's been interesting in the past few years is that we're starting to kind of like think that's not true and what it really seems like is the nuclei can be responsible for a whole lot bigger of an area than we thought, and there and it may even be boundless in some situations, which actually could suggest that hypertrophy doesn't have a ceiling we obviously have a long ways to go to figure out how to get even bigger. I mean I, if you're thinking maybe, or the reason I'm thinking this maybe we really could have Ronnie Coleman times three, you know, just in human form, which would be ridiculous. There's a lot of work that needs to go there. I'm not saying that's it's ready, but it's interesting to think that, like, maybe the ceiling that we thought was there is not actually there and we just got to figure out how to keep on pushing.

Philip Pape: 45:07

Okay, my own nuclear domain hypothesis. That is the hypothesis or it's a counter to that.

Justin Cottle: 45:17

So that's the original hypothesis, is really just saying generally that a nucleus is in charge of a radius. But within that hypothesis we used to think that it was smaller than the data is actually suggesting it is. So it's still under the same name, still the hypothesis. It's just evolving.

Philip Pape: 45:34

Makes sense. Okay, no, that's awesome. I'm going to look more into that. These are all great follow-ups, really good stuff, okay, cool. So you also mentioned muscle damage. So, maybe, going back to anatomy and what you've seen in the lab or what the research says, how crucial is the damage itself for growth? Let's use the right language so people understand what's happening, because we talked in simplistic terms damage, repair, what's really going on and how important is that?

Justin Cottle: 45:57

It's everything. Without damage, without stress, there's no way for tissue to respond and cells and proteins and all of these things to respond. Everything is about stress. There's always an optimal amount of stress. Obviously you can go far beyond and then we have problems. But without stress there's no way to actually modulate, there's no way to change. And so what's actually being affected?

Justin Cottle: 46:22

When you hear like micro tears we all hear about micro tears and it's like a lot of people be like does that mean that is the muscle fiber literally tearing, like, do I have a hole in my muscle? Maybe, kind of, not really, though it's more microscopic. You can have a rupture in the sarcolemma. So again, that was the outside of the muscle fiber. But you can also I'm going to start just dropping terms you can actually shred what's called the sarcoplasmic reticulum, which is what stores calcium. You can start breaking the T-tubule, which is like this invagination, it's like a tunnel that goes into the muscle cell, which is where calcium is going to travel and the action potential. You can shred the actual Z-membranes, the Z-disks, which are like borders of one individual contractile unit. So I can keep on going, you can literally start.

Justin Cottle: 47:09

So when we're talking about muscle damage, there's a lot of things that can be damaged and that doesn't mean that everything does get damaged, and I don't think we have. At least if we do. I don't know this, I don't know how to like, I can't say like this workout will damage your Z membrane as opposed to your T tubule. I don't think. It probably gets that specific. But at the same time it's like the damage can be quite extensive and as long as you're staying within those or you're not overdoing it, then you can actually get some pretty robust repair. Because if you have more efficient T-tubules, then you are actually making it more efficient for the action potential to propagate through the muscle fiber. If your sarcoplasmic reticulum becomes healthier, calcium will be released more efficiently, which could potentially lead to a stronger and faster muscle contraction.

Justin Cottle: 47:57

So when you start actually seeing what's being repaired and being like fortified, you can start seeing how hypertrophy. A lot of times people just view it as the muscles just getting bigger. You're not necessarily getting stronger, which is just a really nonsensical way to view it, because you are getting much stronger. Maybe it's not exclusively with how much protein, but the cell itself is getting stronger, it's getting healthier, it's getting not just bigger. I mean you're literally going to perform better. And again, this just goes back to rest and why rest is so essential because you want to maximize that repair. You want to give your body the time to do that, because if you're not, you're continually injuring the same thing and your body's getting the signal but it doesn't have a way to properly fortify everything.

Philip Pape: 48:41

Yeah, it doesn't think it needs to go beyond that original capacity each time it repairs is what I'm hearing. I do want to hit on the hypertrophy being bigger, not just being muscles being bigger, but also strength, cause yeah, that is a big misconception. It's often this false dichotomy that people create, like are you training for strength or are you training for muscle? Right, and granted, there are extremes, like if you look at power lifters, they may be going for max lifts in a very unique way that you're not going to want or need to do to build muscle, but they kind of lead to the same result because powerlifters are jacked Like once they lose the fat man. You look at Brian Shaw and those guys that have now leaned out and you're like it's incredible. They never thought about or focused on building muscle per se.

Philip Pape: 49:25

And we also know that powerlifters now train in a more well-rounded way, not just doing the big lifts. In fact, that's probably like 20% of their training. The rest of it is accessory work and support work. So are they effectively equivalent? Or if the average lifestyle lifter is listening to this podcast, watching this show, and they're like Justin, what's the best way to train? If I just want to look good. Maybe I want to have a six pack, but I mean and we know nutrition is part of it I just want to look good, be fit. General performance right. Like where would you send them? Easy question, right, yeah?

Justin Cottle: 49:59

You know, and I will say, like I'm not a coach or anything, you know it's like for me. It's like my understanding of this is more based in the science and just like you know for my own working out. But what I would say is, unless you are on those opposite ends of the spectrum, right, if you're really just going for elite type status, I don't think it matters all that much as much as it just means finding something that works for you, because, again, I guarantee, if you were training for hypertrophy, you're going to get a lot stronger too, right? Like, whatever differences are going to be there, you're probably not going to be seeing it in any short term aspect, and so it almost doesn't matter as much as just like, are you seeing results? And that's that, to me, I would say, is what you really want to be heading towards.

Justin Cottle: 50:42

It's more focusing on your nutrition, it's focusing on consistency, it's focusing on all the stuff that we all know we need to do that sometimes we skimp here and there. It's saying, no, like, I'm going to take this seriously, I'm going to get my, I'm going to just check all my boxes and then I'm going to start seeing progress with that. That's, to me the most important thing and that is going to carry you a long way, like a long way just doing that alone. And then what's fun is then you can start experimenting. You know, that's where you can start playing with this and then you can start optimizing.

Justin Cottle: 51:15

So it's I don't know yeah, it's for me, I don't know that I'd send them anywhere outside of just like developing not just the habits, because so many people have the habit of going to the gym right, getting your workout. It's just more like it's everything also around it. It's treating it like an ecosystem. You know, again, it's the getting the sleep, it's getting all that. It's not drinking alcohol. There's so many things that if you can start working on, you're going to see results. That's what I would say.

Philip Pape: 51:40

We're kindred spirits. My man, that's the exact answer I was hoping for, because it is not a binary answer. None of these things are. It's what is going to work for you and, like you said, it's not just doing it. It's doing it, measuring it in some way, seeing that it's working. If it's not working, something has to change, and it may just be one small thing. But don't keep doing what you're doing just because someone says it's the right thing to do if it's not producing results for you. Absolutely, love that. That's what we're all about.

Philip Pape: 52:04

You also talked about having a system or an ecosystem, having just something that works for you. That's part of your routine. I mean, I get up every day and I'm like if I don't train? I don't train every day, but I mean if I weren't training for a week, I would get antsy. I have to do it. It's what works for me, so find what works. I know we're wrapping up on time here. One last question here is do you think what we're learning about this at the cellular level, about muscle growth, about the research, is going to like how is it going to evolve? And, specifically, do we think are there like, any revelations that haven't been discovered or we're trying to get to, that will inform what we are doing in the gym, like is there still a big black box or mystery somewhere that you're hoping we will unlock in the near future?

Justin Cottle: 52:45

You know that is a really good question. And yes, there are plenty. I mean, I don't know, it's hard to say, maybe black box, but there are still plenty of mysteries. A lot of the mysteries within physiology, just generally speaking, is how things work together. Like, if you like, we can see a lot of things there. Like, I want you to put yourself into the position of, like, a research scientist. You can see all the parts. You're just not really sure how they work together, and so the refinement in our understanding of how these parts go together and also the timing in which they do that, there is a lot of room to go with that.

Justin Cottle: 53:16

And what's really exciting for me I know this is a term that's like everyone's kind of getting sick of right now but with AI, a lot of times people think of AI just being this LLM thing like chat, gpt, but there's a lot of really interesting advancements being made in material science, in pharmaceuticals, in the supplement industry, right Targeted medicine and personalized medicine to where it's like what I'm excited about and I can't give you a timeframe on this, like I throw around the number 10 years, I throw around the number five years, I really don't know but I'm excited for like personalized supplementation. I'm excited for kind of like better understanding of what the genetic tests even mean. I'm really excited for how we're going to get better at just delivering these supplements, so not only just giving you what you need, but making sure they are bioavailable to you. To me, I think like we're just starting another revolution, another kind of just huge expansion in this space, where we're going to start feeling healthier than we ever have. It almost sounds science fiction. It almost sounds like pie in the sky type stuff, and that's why I'm like constantly amazed that it's not where it's like I have to catch myself when I'm looking into this and I'm like, are you serious? Like that's actually on the forefront.

Justin Cottle: 54:26

You know, um, I mean imagine just, you know, not even needing to, like you know, take like testosterone or any of these like exogenous hormones. Instead, we're just taking care of the body's natural processes to not only build protein but to inhibit protein degradation, to break down. Like there's so many things that we can play with that we are playing with that are going to start being publicly aware. That I think people are going to be really excited about. So I would say, like in the next 10, 15 years probably. We're going to see some of the coolest advancements things right now that, like we are just used to being science fiction. I think that's all in the pipeline and people are going to be pretty amazed.

Philip Pape: 55:03

Yeah, I'm excited about that. I mean, you mentioned like geneticbased personalization and also doing something that can unlock the limitations, like the protein limitation you said, protein degradation where it's like you combine that with the lifting and the eating properly and it's like you just accelerate that process even more. Very exciting, okay, is there anything you wish I'd asked in this conversation? I know we could probably do another hour on this topic.

Justin Cottle: 55:28

No, actually that's the one thing I want is I want to do another hour sometime. So that's what's fun is. It's like these conversations can go so many different directions in so many different ways. I've loved every part of it, but I do want more. I do want more.

Philip Pape: 55:40

Yeah, awesome, and I hope and I know our listeners have gotten a lot out of this, and hopefully your students as well and everybody, especially when we can kind of combine these different industries and how it all comes together. Thank you, man, this has been really awesome. I want people to know where to find all of your the stuff where you geek out and you talk about what you're excited about. So where can people go, justin?

Justin Cottle: 55:59

Yeah, so you can find me at the Dissection Room. You can find me YouTube channel. You can find me all over social media these me, all over social media. These days, I'm also starting to work at a company called Kenhub. They are the world's leading anatomy educator. So if you guys go to Kenhubcom, you can also see a lot of I'm doing videos for their YouTube channel. I'm doing I'm all over the place these days. So just find me the dissection room. Kenhub is the good place to start. How do you spell Kenhub? K-e-n-h-u-b.

Philip Pape: 56:31

Okay, cool, awesome. Yeah, I'll include those in the show notes, as always and, man, this is a pleasure. I learned a bunch of things and these are probably going to spawn some other episodes on my end too, to dive into some of these topics. So I'll hit you up with questions if I have them, which I know I will, and then we'll connect again in the future. Justin, thank you so much for coming on, my man.