Why the conventional wisdom on how to grow muscles is wrong

Your own quote just says it is an effect, not that it's the purpose.

You’ve just built a straw man argument.

When you say “then you stop eating carbs to get shredded” is just bollocks. No real bodybuilder stops eating carbs to get shredded. We (I say we because I am a contest bodybuilder) tend to reduce carb intake during a cut or show prep because it’s the easiest way to get calories down without hitting hunger levels too bad. And keeping protein and fat at reasonable levels are needed to maintain muscle mass and okay health markers. Heck, even fat will get to an unsustainable level when you’re trying to make it to stage sub 8% of body fat

depends what you mean by "stop". If you mean <100g per day, often less than 50g, then yes they do. They do this for what's known as peaking. They eat less for a week or two prior to "dry out" and then a bunch right before to refill the muscle.

Heres the first article to confirm my point.

> Carbohydrate intake during the restriction phase varied and competitors reported consuming between 0 and 100 g per day. Conversely, CHO intake during loading was reported to be over 2500 g or 833 g per day

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6315482/#:~:tex....

If by "stop" you mean 0g, then yeah, no one does that cause it's basically impossible save for a fast where you solely eat chicken breast and similar macro'd meats.

It's detailed in explaining multiple faucets including nutrition and rest, I didn't follow every source he listed but he claims to have done quite a bit of research regardless everything is listed.

[1] https://www.julian.com/guide/muscle/intro

I don't wanna look like a bodybuilder but if I could stay skinny and shark the highland games I'd be tickled pink.

The standard bullshit line in the fitness industry has always been "everyone else is wrong". Practically what every single trainer ever in the world has said.

The reason is because of all the things I have done in my life, lifting is the most trivially simple activity there is. It is as complex as shoveling dirt. The only way to differentiate if trying to make money is to bullshit. Pick the weights up, put them down, eat food. It just not that complicated.

I've been doing starting strength for about 14 years now and I can bang out a session in 30-45 minutes.

Lift weights 3-4 times a week, cardio outdoors 2 times a week. I drink a whey protein shake with creatine after every workout and don't eat more calories than I burn.

My lifts are continuing to increase and I'm putting on muscle. I'm still under 40 so once my testosterone drops I'm sure that'll get harder.

And he cannot even walk well and his back is fucked up. not exactly worth it

I don't know enough about that specific scientist, but in general, I tend to respect scientists more when they are willing to change their opinion (assuming it's in light of new evidence and not just on a whim) and admit they were wrong previously. That isn't a bad thing, IMO, that is a valuable trait to have, which is why I tend to listen to and respect those who have that trait more than those who dogmatically stick to an opinion regardless of new information.

Hypertrophy has largely been settled and the main mechanisms and science underneath are well known by now. Call is post-2017.

Source: up 40lb of Dexa scan muscle from 2014-2023, at 15lb greater body weight.

Not rocket science. Strongly recommend Renaissance Periodization (the hundred of hours of lectures on YouTube if that’s your thing, the two main textbooks, the training templates, the meal books, or the meal apps) as a potential vendor if you’re on the simultaneously on the brainier/geekier and more ambitious to reach intermediate or further side of humans.

You see this also with HIIT.

Jeff Nippard does a much better job a presenting things as a trade-off that you should consider when choosing or designing your program.

However, at the same time, you're not getting hypertrophy from too many reps at a low % of 1RM (let's say, under 30%)

Edit: I can accept the 30% they give at the article, that's not such a low rep load (before the 50% I had there)

And of course you can train to failure at 30% - the number of repetitions around 35 as it can be seen in the quoted article in fig 4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3404827/

No idea if there was ever a shred of scientific method behind that statement but it struck me as good common sense wisdom anyways.

My understanding is that there is a pretty big asterisk here: for the submaximal sets to be effective, they need to get close to failure. You're not going to be very effective doing sets with 10 reps in reserve.

But the thing is that beginners typically aren't very good at gauging how may reps they actually have in the tank. There have been a number of experiments where people were asked to rate how close they were to failure. And then they were asked to actually go to failure. And everyone underestimated - sometimes by quite a lot.

So, for people with experience in the gym, this is probably good advice. But I think for newbies, going to failure can be beneficial just because the directions are so robust - people are much less likely to plateau for mysterious reasons.

It's important to have variations in how to position the pushups. I do 30-70 reps depending on difficulty of arm position, usually two or three sets a day max, each set can be a different position. When I feel strong I do reps slowly both on ascent and descent. Due to my flexibiility (a very important factor in having elongated shape big muscles in pecs etc), I also do triceps also in many widths by putting my hands behind me at the pool border and lifting my weight; it is very demanding exercise, also works back and shoulders.

However the most important tip no one realizes for growing muscle, for having resistance, for having tonus and for a real fast recovery comes from India. Apply oil to body (preferrably all of body, leave for 40+ minutes as you sit or meditate, listen to music; use old clothing and wash it separately, oil trashes and stains all, and it quickly ruins any stretch fiber and elastics bands on shorts etc). Coconut oil gives the most mass, good for hot season. Ginger oil good for winter, get south american Buriti oil if you can (mix some drops to coconut, use with utmost caution, observe the effects, how it makes you agitated etc, never use it in summer), brazilian indians used it for going to war, it makes muscles really bulge, The greek used oil for wrestling matches too, and for looking strong. Oil is not all about the shiny effect, it improves muscles tremendously.

I would compare the effect of not applying oil to the muscle parts after a workout to not eating any protein after a workout. It's such a dramatic effect.

You can also go to a Testosterone replacement clinic and get an actual TRT prescription provided your T is actually low. If they are ethical, they will monitor to keep it within a healthy range so you don't go past an upper limit.

Your results will suck ass if you have low T.

This obviously leads to very unrealistic expectations for those that are natural.

The nattyorjuice subreddit is sobering material.

The needs and goals of these two groups of people are going to be so drastically different that a lot of the advice is going to end up being counterproductive.

But, yeah, the non-initiated get a pretty skewed picture about how muscular one can get, naturally. That's a whole another discussion about body perception/dismorphia and societal idealizations.

It is also fairly easy to give an accurate estimation (esp. if fat percentage <10%) via FFMI.[0]

In some natural bodybuilding competitions anyone with FFMI >25 is ruled out automatically because of the high probability of steroid use at that point. Of course a non-trivial amount of natural genetic freaks certainly exist beyond this number and a case can be made that's the whole point of competitive sports: "freaks" competing against each other.

But then again once you are in the highly competitive game it is (nearly) impossible to resist PEDs.

I guess for that reason many different classes/federations exist to choose from.

[0]https://mennohenselmans.com/ffmi-calculator/

Thanks for mentioning the last part. That "proper form" bit is waaaaaaaaaay overlooked and even the definition of "proper form" can be ambiguous. A lot of people - myself included on SO many embarrassing occasions - tend to cheat out of proper form. This resulted in injuries that have left me permanently unable to do some exercises.

Like many others do, I got frustrated with lack of growth so I would try and push through extra reps or higher weights while neglecting what my body was telling me. I'd read threads like this and see somebody talk about how moving to lower rep ranges suddenly packed on way more muscle, so I'd change up my workout to do the same; except this compromised proper form which then lead to injuries due to the additional stress by heavier weights. Even after recovering from an injury, I would take caution for a few months, get frustrated, and repeat the cycle over again with more injuries.

You talk about variance here and that's absolutely a topic that is not discussed enough. For example I'm a person with very low bone density. This makes heavier lifts even more dangerous when not done with proper form. Someone with good skeletal structure might cause mild injury where someone like me could end up with a permanent disability making the same mistakes. None of these articles or guides say that though. They treat all bodies like with a one-size fits all approach and it's very dangerous.

These days I use a modified Bowflex Ultimate Machine (I've removed the rods and replaced with actual weights using additional pulleys), so everything is controlled by cables. This allows me to keep a somewhat better form due to the angle at which the movements are restricted. It's not as good as proper machine weights, but it's a good trade-off between free weights and machine weights. All my exercises are lighter weight and try to avoid exerting pressure on the spine or other joints. Every exercise is done SLOWLY with careful attention to how much pressure is being exerted on my muscles, tendons, etc. If I can't keep proper form, the weight is too high or I've gone to "failure". No cheat reps. The rep range is generally in the 10-15 area but varies depending on exercise and how much strain I feel during the movement. It's worked very well for me the last 5 years.

All I would add is that the sooner you acknowledge your genetic limitations the sooner you can start training within them. Maybe you won’t look like Schwarzenegger or Ronnie Coleman, but Brad Pitt in Fight Club is a reasonable target (assuming aesthetics are a goal - they don’t have to be!)

It seemed to work to an extent (did it too short to get a meaningful idea of long term impact). The main caveat to me that made me go back to my 5 set x 5 rep of heavy weights was simply that it took way too much time.

But a less extreme variant, such as what you describe is absolutely worth considering for people, especially if the realistic alternative is doing nothing instead.

The other thing is it's been posited for awhile now, that gained muscle/strength requires less work to keep. You have a long history of resistance training, and presumably gained strength and muscle. Now you just need to be do maintenance to keep what you have while supporting your sport.

I say all this b/c I do something similar. I stopped power lifting once I got older and moved to more HIIT like workouts 3-4x/week. They take maybe 30 minutes each. But, I also train BJJ ~4x/week. Would my HIIT like workouts be so effective if I didn't start very strong and also do BJJ? IDK.

I did HIT for a long time which made me stronger. But only since I do HIIT I also feel more healthy, my endurance increased and I lost some fat (in addition to getting stronger).

The HIIT I can especially recommend is https://www.12minuteathlete.com/ . And as a disclaimer I'm not in any way connected to that website.

Incidentally, it also helped my muscle size significantly, likely exactly because it was far easier to stay motivated and consistent.

In my experience the carry-over between different rep ranges etc. is significant enough that unless you're aiming to be a competitive lifter or bodybuilder, what matters most is what you can motivate yourself to do consistently. When I was younger that was 5x5, or later 3x5 or 5-3-1 or similar where I could keep adding weight as often as possible. Now I'm doing higher rep ranges because I know what I've been able to lift and I'm not likely to exceed it again (I'm 47; I probably could if I cared enough, I didn't lift that much, barely into competitive levels, but I don't want to spend enough time in the gym to make that happen) and maintaining my health is motivation enough.

The strongest PLs are just big.

I focused for years only on PL and I also got as big based on how much food I allowed myself to eat.

100% agree, that everyone should just move heavy weights. Looking good, muscles, etc... will follow.

Powerlifters use every possible technique to reduce effort (e.g. reducing range of motion) in order to lift heavier weights. Obviously this is a good idea for them since the amount of weight lifted is what wins them competitions. But this is a very specific form of strength which isn't generally applicable.

> I think training for strength has more everyday health benefits than bodybuilding

I think it's the opposite actually, due to the above reason (training for general strength is better for most people than optimizing 3 lifts). If you find a way to reduce bench press range of motion and this gives you an extra 5 kg on the bar, this doesn't make you any healthier.

> its training methodology (train large muscle groups with high weight and lower reps ~2x/week) at the novice and intermediate level is much less time-consuming.

You could train large muscle groups as a novice bodybuilder as well. The main difference is that you don't only focus on increasing the weight lifted, but also on putting as much stress on the muscle as possible at a slightly higher rep count (somewhere between 5 and 15 is typical). Doing sets of 5-15 isn't significantly more time consuming than sets of 1-5, since in both cases most of the time is taken up by resting between sets.

The thing I always ask myself is: if I train too much, won't I get bored of jogging ?

Both muscle recovery time and high calory count without adding on fat depends on age as the number one factor.

Yes, Bryan Haycock popularized HST. It's a science-backed routine that you can pick up easily, without expensive training programs. Progressive loading increases each session for two weeks to your 15RM on the last session, the next two week cycle you progress to your 10RM, and the final, you progress to your 5RM. The last cycle is the hardest of all, haha.

If you are natural you need to very cerfully monitor your recovery and how often you train each muscle. Especially if you get older