Stronger with Time

How much of what we do in the gym today is genuinely new, and how much has been around for decades?
In this episode of Stronger With Time, I speak with Dr Conor Heffernan about where many of the training ideas we now take for granted came from, how they changed over time, and what their history can teach us about how we train today.
Conor is a historian and sociologist of sport at Ulster University whose work focuses on the history of strength training and physical culture. He is the author of The History of Physical Culture and When Fitness Went Global, and writes at Physical Culture Study.

In this episode:
How physical culture evolved into modern bodybuilding and gym culture

Eugen Sandow, the first modern physique star, and why he sold light dumbbells while training heavy himself

Where the squat, three sets of ten and body-part splits came from

What lifters already understood about progressive overload by the 1930s

The steroid era, and what changed in training once anabolic steroids arrived

Where single-set and high-intensity training came from

The history of women in strength, from calisthenics and “toning” to progressive strength training

What Conor takes from more than a century of strength-training history into how he thinks about training today

Timestamps
00:00 Introduction
00:57 Physical culture and the origins of modern gym culture
06:28 Where three sets of ten and body-part splits came from
13:08 What lifters already knew by the 1930s
16:50 Eugen Sandow and early fitness marketing
21:39 What a 1930s lifter would recognise today
31:33 Silver Era training and the pre-steroid physique
39:18 When anabolic steroids entered strength sports
43:01 How steroids changed training
49:18 Single-set and high-intensity training
52:49 The history of women in strength
59:53 Where “toning” and light weights for women came from
01:06:15 What Conor takes from strength-training history
01:11:23 Where to learn more

Dr Conor Heffernan
Ulster University: https://www.ulster.ac.uk/staff/c-heffernan
Physical Culture Study: https://physicalculturestudy.com/
Physical Culture Study Substack: https://physicalculture.substack.com/

Books
The History of Physical Culture: https://cgscholar.com/publishers/books/the-history-of-physical-culture
When Fitness Went Global: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/when-fitness-went-global-9781350500785/

Dr Tony Boutagy / Stronger With Time
Website: https://tonyboutagy.com/
Explore Tony’s courses: https://tonyboutagy.com/explore-the-courses-page
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tonyboutagy/

This episode is for general educational purposes only and is not intended as individualised exercise advice.

VO2 max matters, but what else determines endurance, and how should you train for it?

In this episode of Stronger With Time, I sit down with Professor Andy Jones to explore where zone two and intervals fit, what elite endurance athletes can teach us, and what this means for training, performance and healthy ageing.

Andy is Professor of Applied Physiology at the University of Exeter and one of the world's leading endurance physiologists. He served as a scientific editor on Nike's Breaking2 project, worked with marathon world-record holder Paula Radcliffe for more than a decade, and has helped shape research on critical power, dietary nitrate and physiological resilience.

In this episode:
What VO2 max can and cannot tell you about endurance

Where zone two fits within aerobic training

Whether you should avoid the middle ground between easy work and hard intervals

How Andy approaches intervals for improving VO2 max

How to combine aerobic training with three weekly strength sessions

Whether men and women need different endurance training

What Breaking2 and Paula Radcliffe reveal about endurance beyond VO2 max

What Andy's research shows about nitrate, beetroot and carbohydrate fuelling

Resources:

Professor Andy Jones
University of Exeter academic profile: https://experts.exeter.ac.uk/1327-andy-jones
University of Exeter Sports Physiology & Exercise Testing: https://sites.exeter.ac.uk/spet/meet-the-team/

Dr Tony Boutagy / Stronger With Time
Website: https://tonyboutagy.com/
Explore Tony's courses: https://tonyboutagy.com/explore-the-courses-page
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tonyboutagy/

Follow Stronger With Time for more evidence-informed conversations on training, health and performance.

This episode is for general educational purposes only and is not a training prescription or medical advice.

Two people can have similar muscle mass and very different levels of strength. What accounts for the difference?
In this episode of Stronger With Time, Tony speaks with Professor Paul Comfort, one of the world’s leading strength and conditioning researchers, about what influences strength beyond muscle size, and what that means for training.
Paul is Professor of Strength and Conditioning at the University of Salford in the UK, where he leads the Master of Strength and Conditioning program. He also holds an adjunct professorship at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia. His research focuses on strength training, force production and the assessment of physical performance.
In this episode, they discuss:
How strength is assessed, and whether a true one-repetition maximum is as fatiguing as people think

Whether bar speed matters as much as intent

When slow, controlled reps help, and when they may not

How psychology and neural inhibition can affect strength expression

What stability and unilateral work can reveal about a weak link

Why lowering a weight is different from lifting it

What happens when training frequency changes but weekly volume stays the same, and whether microdosing works

Whether strength, hypertrophy and power should be trained together or emphasised at different times

How strength training priorities change with age

Professor Paul Comfort
University of Salford https://www.salford.ac.uk/our-staff/paul-comfort

ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Paul-Comfort

Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xukgqDQAAAAJ&hl=en

ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1131-8626

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/paulcomfort1975/

X https://x.com/PaulComfort1975

Books
Advanced Strength and Conditioning https://www.routledge.com/Advanced-Strength-and-Conditioning-An-Evidence-based-Approach/Turner-Comfort/p/book/9780367491352

Performance Assessment in Strength and Conditioning https://www.routledge.com/Performance-Assessment-in-Strength-and-Conditioning/Comfort-Jones/p/book/9781032831497

Laboratory Manual for Strength and Conditioning https://www.routledge.com/Laboratory-Manual-for-Strength-and-Conditioning/Miller-Comfort-McMahon/p/book/9781032033259

NSCA Developing Power https://us.humankinetics.com/products/developing-power-2nd-edition

Dr Tony Boutagy / Stronger With Time

Website https://tonyboutagy.com/

Courses https://tonyboutagy.com/explore-the-courses-page

Weak Links in Movement https://tonyboutagy.com/weak-links-movement-full-course

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/tonyboutagy/

Follow Stronger With Time for more evidence-informed conversations on training, health and performance.

This episode is for general educational purposes only and is not intended as individualised exercise advice.

Most of the attention in training goes to the workout itself. But what happens after the workout that determines the result you get from it?
In this episode of Stronger With Time, Tony speaks with Professor John Hawley, one of the most influential figures in exercise metabolism, about what four decades of research can teach us about how we train, fuel and recover.
John is a Distinguished Professor at Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, where he directs the Centre for Human Metabolism and Performance. His research spans how exercise and diet regulate fat and carbohydrate metabolism in skeletal muscle, the molecular basis of training adaptation, circadian biology and nutrient timing, and how exercise improves insulin action.
John helped run some of the pioneering interval-training studies in Cape Town in the 1990s and has spent the decades since studying the mechanisms behind how training works.
In this episode:
What happens inside the muscle after the workout ends

How short, hard intervals compare with longer intervals for improving VO₂max and performance

What high-intensity training does differently from steady-state exercise

How often to go hard, and where lower-intensity training fits

Why carbohydrate availability matters when the work gets hard

When training with low carbohydrate availability may have a place

What the carbohydrate mouth rinse reveals about the brain’s role in performance

Concurrent training, the interference effect and when it matters

How exercise changes insulin sensitivity and glucose disposal

What John’s research on time-restricted eating is finding

Whether sex meaningfully changes the metabolic response to exercise

Where the search for an exercise mimetic stands

How John thinks about consistency, recovery and making exercise a priority

This conversation is for anyone who wants to train with more intent and understand what is driving the results.
Resources
Professor John Hawley
ACU profile: https://www.acu.edu.au/research-and-enterprise/our-research-institutes/mary-mackillop-institute-for-health-research/our-people/professor-john-hawley
Research and publications: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22John+Hawley%22+exercise+metabolism
On PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Hawley+JA+exercise+metabolism
Book: Peak Performance: Training and Nutritional Strategies for Sport, by John Hawley and Louise Burke https://books.google.com/books/about/Peak_Performance.html?id=3P5qQgAACAAJ
Dr Tony Boutagy / Stronger With Time
Website: https://tonyboutagy.com/
Explore Tony’s courses: https://tonyboutagy.com/explore-the-courses-page
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tonyboutagy/

Subscribe to Stronger With Time for more evidence-informed conversations on training, health and performance.
This episode is for general educational purposes only and is not intended as individualised exercise or nutrition advice.

How many sets should you do? How often should you train a muscle? How close to failure should you go?
Before answering any of those questions, I want to know what the program is trying to achieve and what the person can recover from.
In this episode of Stronger With Time, I'm resharing a conversation I had with Ariel and Matt from Raise the Bar about the way I think about exercise programming after more than 30 years of coaching and studying exercise science.
We start with how I moved from endurance sport into strength and conditioning, why I have remained a student of the field, and what decades of coaching have taught me about translating research into practice.
From there, we get into the programming questions that matter in the gym, including several areas where I have changed my mind.
We discuss:
Why the goal and the person’s ability to recover come before sets and reps

Why the first sets of an exercise appear to give the most benefit, what my new meta-analysis changed about how quickly returns diminish, and what that means for how much you do

Why strength and hypertrophy are related, but not the same adaptation

Why mechanical tension is central to muscle growth

What soreness, muscle damage and metabolic stress do, and do not, tell us about hypertrophy

Rep ranges, proximity to failure and muscle fibre recruitment

Exercise selection and why some muscles benefit from biomechanically different movements

Training frequency versus doing more volume in one session

Why I often favour total-body training two or three times per week

How I approach strength training for women who want to get stronger without maximising muscle size

How long to keep a program and why changing exercises too quickly can matter

Progressive overload, periodisation and where the evidence is still developing

Where research can guide programming and where coaching judgement still matters

Why I'd question any program that needs a deload, and what a drop in performance is actually telling you

This conversation is for coaches, trainers and serious lifters who want to make better programming decisions without reducing exercise science to a set of universal rules.
I am building a short course on the science of hypertrophy: I'm building a short course on the science of hypertrophy.
Over the past year I've reviewed the hypertrophy research in full and spoken with many of the researchers behind it on this podcast, and that work has changed a few things about how I program for muscle.
The short course covers exactly those changes. Join the interest list to be the first to hear when it opens:
https://go.tonyboutagy.com/register-you-interest-page
If you want the complete foundation on program design, that is Advanced Program Mastery. After all of this work, very little in it has needed to change:
https://tonyboutagy.com/advanced-program-mastery-course-page