Resistance training load does not determine hypertrophy
physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Yeah this is why. Anything you do as an untrained person is going to get you newbie gains. It's just really easy to improve initially. Doesn't mean it'll work after the first 6 months
> it is possible that the type I fibers of subjects were underdeveloped in comparison with the type II fibers as a result of training methodologies. The type I fibers therefore may have had a greater potential for growth compared with the type II fibers
Maybe a mix of both types of training would be best then?
They're essentially saying that individual genetics explain the majority of the variation seen as a response to muscle stimulus in their test subjects, not the mass used, because the variation within the test cohorts was greater than the variation between them. You can argue that, if they didn't test experienced lifters the results might be different in that population, but you can't dismiss the results on those grounds.
Completely anecdotal, but when I was 18, in highschool, I trained in the gym in my hometown, supervised with a trainer, 12 reps per muscle group, very modest gains.
I move to university, start reading a fitness forum where people were saying do max 6 reps if you want big gains.
I also started supplementing with whey protein, and within 3 months the gains were spectacular, everybody noticed, I felt on fire, best time of my life, I miss so much how great I felt in my own body.
I've seen other colleagues and how they trained -- I can say there was 100% correlation that those people who were not training hard also did not have big gains. People who had enough breath left in them to chat in the gym simply did not gain as much as people I saw as training hard.
Also for me, the 6 reps to exhaustion felt completely different then 12 reps (again, to complete exhaustion) -- immediately after the training it felt amazing to be alive, the world became a comfortable place, my anxiety completely vanished, and in the night and morning after an intense training (especially the legs and back) the erections and libido boost were out of this world, something I never felt with the 12 reps regimen.
"Traditionally" the rep ranges recommended for hypertrophy has typically been significantly higher than the ranges recommended for strength, but the number of sets recommended is often also significantly higher, often translating to significantly higher total volume.
> I've seen other colleagues and how they trained -- I can say there was 100% correlation that those people who were not training hard also did not have big gains. People who had enough breath left in them to chat in the gym simply did not gain as much as people I saw as training hard.
Well, yes, but training with lower weights and higher rep ranges does not automatically translate to "not training hard".
Having gone through a period of really high rep training, including for a short period doing 1000 squats per day as an experiment, mostly bodyweight, that was far harder exercise than when I 1RM'd 200kg. But the effects are different.
I much prefer Stronglifts and Madcow but because I favour strength over size, and it's far more time efficient, not because you can't also get results with more, lower-weight reps.
I'm not sure where this idea came from that people do one or the other. Except for the advanced lifter, both will happen from either program. Show me a person who is really big and they are likely pretty strong as well (see Ronnie Coleman). Same with the other direction.
A Strong lifts 5x5 program build around squat, deadlifts, bench and shoulder press can always make me feel pumped for the day!
Shoutout to Barbell medicine. It is a good youtube channel by 2 lifting MDs (formerly associated with Starting Strength).
Bent over rows being and easy example: at a 5RM upper back is giving out as desired, but past 10RM my lower back is the issue. If my goals are bent over endurance in my core then higher reps will force adaptations where I’m weak, if I’m trying to get my shoulder blades sexy and humpy I gotta keep the stimulus where I want results. In addition to manipulating reps something like a snatch grip can provide a leverage based answer to the same targeting needs.
Proximity to failure is key, targeting and maximizing that proximity is individual and highly goal dependant.
[As a bit of a physio case I’ve found General Gainz (/r/gzcl on Reddit), to be a highly productive RPE based system with very happy adaptive approach to hitting personal limitations mid workout; no “failures” or broken spreadsheets = motivation = consistency = progress; strong recommend to check out]
IDK. When I powerlifted the goal was to move the weight. I've almost passed out from heavy deadlifts, but was rarely out of breath. I also almost never chat in the gym because it's my meditative place, not because I couldn't chat :)
It’s not an innocent question: Gains and feeling extremely well and confident and serotonin-boosted are only useful if it can be sustained in life. The two alternatives are: 1. It pumps you but tires you very fast and you get fat down the line, and your overall life is ~obese (seems to happen to way more people than one could assume), 2. Only the change produces this feeling, and change cannot be sustained forever.
The thing that motivated me to start was the fact I was not very successful with girls and gaining 30 pounds of muscles in early 2000's Romania was intoxicating, if anybody told me before that girls would send kisses in the subway, grab my arms in the bus and start conversations with me or ask for my number in clubs, colleagues ask me to dump my girlfriend I would have said it's impossible.
I'm ashamed to say, but all that validation was even better than the way lifting made me feel and the primary drive to weight lifting.
It's only now that I remember how good weight lifting in itself made me feel, I never did give it much thought back then.
But now it's very hard to find the time or motivation to start it again.
I'm not really scared of getting fat down the line, I'm in my early 40s now and I've never been fat.
You could be right, that it's only the change that makes you feel amazing, and I only ever went to the gym for some 6 months total, but I have my doubt that it would ever go away, I've been on many, many drugs, NOT ONE ever made me feel good for 6 months straight, they all downregulate very fast.
Now thinking about it, I get a renewed motivation to re-start weight lifting
So basically the study's results are "there are individual differences in how people respond to training". Wow, such news, so research, much insight. /s
Therefore study itself is dumb and the misleading title makes it even worse.
failing to lift is not the same as lifting until failure.
Consider, if I load up the bench press to 200kg I won't get a single rep. If I try to rep it I'll fail but I'm not lifting until failure.
If I load it up to smaller weight lets say 100kg and crank out rep after rep I'll get much closer to "lifting until failure."
When I reach the end, the last rep is a rep I won't make. But I'm still not at a point where I can't do no more, just the weight is too big, so I must reduce the weight and go again. When I do this I get even closer to "lifting until failure".
It's like integration, the smaller the infinitesimal the closer to the true value you get when you sum up (integrate) all the parts.
Ideally you would leave 1-2 possible reps. I think it's important to train to failure to know your body and learn to gauge your reps to failure but other than that and very little time per week to train it's eventually counterproductive.
And if training with lower weights you tend to end very far from failure if just following a program without knowing what you are doing.
First intensity. Then recovery. These two dictate the volume. If volume exceeds recovery injury and burnout will follow.
Fixed that.
As the comment you replied to noted, newbie gains are remarkably sensitive to any stimulation, and insensitive to the type of stimulation. Because going from zero to any resistance training is a massive stimulus increase, on a long-term under stimulated system.
The study does confirm that. The data it produces is useful.
What this study doesn't do, is help newbies (or anyone) choose the most effective practices to adopt. Because 10 weeks is way too short to identify best practices for any sustained program.
Particularly as you get older you become more injury prone and your recovery time slows down. This necessitates being cautious about how quickly you increase weight and how often you go to failure.
The better goal to target is increasing volume, where volume is defined as Sets x Reps x Weight. The literature doesn't conclusively establish that any one of these is "more important" than the others for hypertrophy. The only real caveat when you follow this rule is that at a certain extreme of low weight / high reps (like 50 reps) you wouldn't actually be doing resistance training anymore, it'd be cardio.
As I understand it taking a set near failure works reasonably anywhere between 5 to 30 reps, but 30 well controlled reps with good form * 3+ sets for each muscle group gets really boring.
So optimal in terms of personal preference is defiantly worth considering alongside optimal in terms of results, but optimal in terms of returns on effort defiantly has a place at some point in our lives.
If you actually can’t use proper form that’s already failure of one of the muscles you’re trying to train. However many people resort to improper form well before that point.
Further the risk isn’t just injury, using excessive weights you can’t properly train with can mean failure to provide proper stimulus to a muscle you’re targeting.
But as long as you’re not going so hard you risk injury, it might be great overall. Could be really good for your mental state.
Its unfortunate that people say deadlifting "wrong" causes injury, while the evidence does not support it. People should not be turned off from lifting heavy by such statements.
As I mentioned in another comment a possibile way to mitigate the risks is to reduce the load and make the exercise harder and increase the time under load by slowing down the exercise.
Also it's a good idea to swap from a higher risk exercise to a safer one to crank out the last reps. For example from squat to leg press.
I’m not sure this is true and it might be the opposite. Lactic acid will build up with light weight while trying to hit a volume number that will make it hard for people to finish.
The caveat is that you need anaerobic training. Low enough weight and it’s cardio, you don’t get giant legs by walking to failure for example.
The former group is endurance athletes with skinny legs and the latter group is more focused on maximum power. Similar to marathon runners vs sprinters.
The pro velodrome cyclists do tremendous leg training programs specifically to develop the muscles. It's not the cycling that builds that muscle.
Yeah uphill cycling or sprints probably go anaerobic at times, you can tell because you need to stop from the muscle burning/refusing to move, rather than going out of breath or general tiredness.
Some will, many won’t. It’s clearly not necessary.
At very low reps and high weight, particularly for highly coordinated motions (squats, dips, pull-ups, Pulver press back-extensions), there's a much higher chance for injury due to insufficient support at one or more positions within the entire range of concentric and eccentric efforts by all activated muscles. We all have, at the very least, minor intrinsic asymmetries that need explicit addressing.
There's also intra-set recovery. Roughly (very roughly) speaking, your endo-neuro-muscular system "adapts best" where there is a refractory period for a reset-to-quiescence between exertions.
There is real truth to "muscle memory" and the exclusive way to achieve that (and avoid injury) is through a sufficient amount of well-formed repetitions. The only way to achieve those repetitions is by using a resistance that's sufficiently low.
As long as your movement does not degrade horribly, asymmetry is fine.
Even before strength training, your one arm is dominant, more precise. But this has an effect on your leg as well.
Doing unilateral work will never change that asymmetry. As you get stronger, due to drastically different activations of the nervous system between the sides, you will get slightly different adaptations.
Looking at powerlifters, most of them have visibly different sizes of hip, leg musculature between sides. They even have drastic flexibility differences where one hip goes deeper, or the musculature makes the barbell sit skewed on the back.
Long story short, failed reps get much more risky and problematic as the weight you’re lifting approaches your 1RM.
Note for the uninitiated: That figure is not even impressive or competitive with competition lifters. This is just “guy who put in the time and work” numbers.
Generally training to failure is completely fine for say a set of tricep extensions. Generally safe.
However, training to failure on compound lifts like a deadlift or benchpress, or involving sensitive muscles like a shoulder press, isn't.
Technique generally suffers at the point of failure. Making a habit of doing thousands of repetitions in the next decade at the point where technique fails, on an exercise that can mess up your back permanently, or your shoulders, is bad advice.
For these exercises it's better to stop 2 reps short of failure. This is more safe. Also it requires moderate recovery getting you back in the gym quicker, meaning you can compound more incremental improvements in a given training period (say 5 years).
Even then, some still cautiously go to failure to keep an understanding of what their failure point really is. You could go for a PR once or twice a month for example and go to failure, with a proper warmup, spotter etc. But purely for hypertrophy there's not really a point, this is more for strength training.
Generally people that say they train to failure mean 2 reps in reserve. Training to absolute failure on all muscles is very rare and generally advised against.
Put another way, you can do crunches to failure every single day, but you'll want to keep some reps in the tank for squats and you'll want to plan on at least 12-24 hours of recovery between squat sessions.
training to failure puts you at higher risk of injury and there are diminishing returns as you approach your 1 rep max and/or failure
hypertrophy can happen with more reps or more weight
strength gains are usually just focused on progressive overload
though, of course, hypertrophy will happen either way and contributes to increased strength, but this seems to be further confirmation that you can gain muscle size either way
for example, if someone new starts with low weight to work on proper technique and form, and adds weight each week they will continue to both get stronger and to gain muscle
i'd imagine the average person who is casually lifting might not even get to this point and could easily spend a couple of years before really hitting a spot where the nuance is more important
Second potential issue is too much training vrt recovery.
A good way to add safety margin when training to failure is to reduce the weights and slow down the exercise and increase the time under load.
For example bench press, do 5s down (eccentric), 5s pause (isometric) and then (optionally) 5s press (concentric). Your weights will go way down because this exercise will be so hard. But the stress on the joints and ligaments will be reduced.
1-5 reps for strength. 5-30 reps for hypertrophy.
I trained myself to do pull-ups using this method, repeatedly lowering myself in a controlled motion from the top position while I was too weak to actually pull myself up.
One would also expect it not to do as much for strenght, since adaptations are somewhat specific to the training.
I would argue both categories of the study are about low reps. I don't see how the body would tell the difference between 12 and 25 reps. If you said between 5 and 500, like it has to meaningfully take much longer, otherwise why would doing something so similar have any meaningful difference?
The way I think about it is that nature mostly reacts to order of magnitude changes. 12 to 25 is the same thing.
Like why not make a study to see if its more nutritious to eat dinner in 15 or 20 minutes?
To be clear, the implication is that 12 and 25 have different weights so they tire you the same amount. Do you think it would be a very strongly felt difference in that situation? What would the difference feel like?
Obviously, for practical reasons the optimal range for each exercise will vary. For squat 5-10 is definitely better than 10-20 let alone 20-30. For DB side raises highter reps would feel better than the lower rep range.
Let's ignore this article for a moment.
Overall factors that REALLY matter building muscle: 1. Consistency - Working out each muscle group at least once a week....every week. 2. Diet - Making sure you are consuming enough protein in your diet, approximately 1gram/pound of body weight...or near it or even best you can. Total calories consumed a day should match any online calculator for your age and activity level. 3. Sleep! 4. Sleep! 5. Vary your workout - some weeks high reps low weight and some weeks low reps high weight. Why? Never let your body know what you're doing and shock it as best you can. Always try to exert yourself enough to be sore within 48 hours of a workout.
Now multiply this over a few years.
Stop reading these studies thinking there is some optimal way! It's just hard work over time.
BTW: In winter I bench press 350 pounds or 159KG. I run 10KM or 6.1 miles twice a week and increase it a little bit in summer. I pull my body in two different directions because I love both.
In an ironic twist, you then proceed to peddle your own. In a single paragraph you added more contentious "advice" than in the entire article you're dismissing.
> Stop reading these studies thinking there is some optimal way! It's just hard work over time.
"Hard work" and "learning new things" are not mutually exclusive. Stop presuming you know what I think while I'm reading these studies.
I think many people tend to get stuck in premature optimization, which can take the fun away and thus you end up quitting. I did that a few times, so it might be a me-thing.
Nowadays I exercise 4x/week without really worrying about a strategy or about optimal protein intake etc.
But then again, nowadays my goal is just to live healthy rather than gain strength.
My point is, simply doing it consistently, even if slightly less optimally, will trivially surpass anything else in the long run and there are no "silver bullets" in training.
The only importance is safety, avoiding injuring oneself.
Also, the article also states this: "RET-induced hypertrophy is mediated to a far greater degree by inherent endogenous biological factors"
The muscle "shock" broscience has been disproven many times:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35438660/ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349502442_Does_Vary...
Variety isn't to shock or confuse the body, it's just to make sure you actually hit all the muscles in as many ways possible. Take your average push/pull gym rat to a yoga class or a climbing wall and they'll be more sore the next day than they've ever been before, because they'll activate muscles they didn't even know they had.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmOBmTZARq8
Basically work the muscle harder and get more jacked. It isn't that hard. Full body workouts are also great for this reason: you can hit a muscle more times per week and be fresher when you hit that muscle, so both the tension and time under tension can be higher vs a body part split.
It could turn out to be that the brain is coordinating hypertrophic biochemical cascades in muscles, and TUT is just a fairly reliable method for inducing this.
I was a competitive powerlifter and trained around pro bodybuilders for years, and in my experience, the only commonality between them was the intense all consuming drive to be absolutely monstrous (and they ate a lot). Some would train for 2 hours a day, some would train for 45 minutes 3x a week, some would use high volume in the 50-70% range and others would focus on 70-85%, some were explosive some were slow and steady, really it was all over the map.
I'd guess that drugs come into the equation if you were training around pro bodybuilders and that unlevels the playing field between each person because of how much they might have been on. And amongst the pro's, you're going to hit those genetic Mentzer-like freaks that can somehow grow on 45min 3x a week.
100% agree that drive and intensity is key, and there is more than one way to get big from a program POV.
I like to do a weight training as the consistent foundation, with a mix of heavy lifts, calisthenics, volume (bodybuilding) training and mobility training. Add in some yoga, rock climbing, biking, soccer. I feel this sort of mix balances movements out which helps with injury prevention and also makes sure you always have something active to do that you enjoy, which is definitely #1.
Progress is the weight on the bar increasing. Progress is not you being sore. Excess soreness is counterproductive during training, and should only be sought after if you are exercising as a penance for sins instead of training for some goal.
For more information read "Practical Programming for Strength Training".
Beginners should focus on form, consistency, and linear progression of weight. If you can stand the boredom do the exact same program for a year. Probably 2-3 full body workouts that hit each body part twice.
For intermediate+, hitting a body part once a week is suboptimal for most. People who care about results and progression/growth should be progressing from 5 up to 20 hard sets per muscle per week across the span of a few years. (Compounds hit multiple, so it's not necessarily 20 hard times the number of muscles!) What's "hard"? in the 0-2 RIR range, ideally some to failure. Most people do not know what 0RIR is until they actually go to failure on a weight, compute their 1RM and start to use the computed reps/weight load. For many people "0 RIR" is actually 3+ RIR because they stop themselves short. This is why I mostly only trust studies that take people to true failure (either an inability to move the weight any more, or a coach saying the person significantly broke form and must stop)
For advanced, as i understand it, they need to focus on weekly periodization like hitting 3RIR, 2RIR, 1RIR, 0RIR (test new 1RM), Recovery week kind of cycles. Plus more that advanced coaches can teach.
<https://blog.nasm.org/reps-in-reserve>
0RM: One rep max. This is the (actual or theoretical) maximum weight / resistance which can be moved on a given lift. ExRx has a good calculator as well as several tables for calculating resistance at specified reps:
I believe this should be lean mass, not total mass. I think people tried to calibrate this metric since most people don't have scales that can measure composition... but if you're obese, you're going to be consuming more than you need to, which is counter productive if you're obese.
Every calorie you get from protein reduces your cravings for food significantly more then the equivalent carb and fats.
You still need to get over the initial insulin normalization though from reducing sugars. Nothing reduces that pain, no matter what you try.
However, after a nice home-made burger I won't feel hungry again until the next meal and am full of energy. This isn't a tiny burger, either, I'll usually slap an egg on a 150g patty with some cheese for good measure. Since this is an "I'm too lazy to actually cook" meal, this tends to go with some kind of potatoes. I think the only difference between the two is the quality of the ingredients (added sugar in ketchup = bad, tomatoes are plenty sweet).
I think the difference absolutely comes down to what I eat. I don't put sugar syrup or whatever makes the McDonald's sauces so sweet in my burger, just basic boiled tomato sauce (so that it's thicker and doesn't make a mess). And I think that not only typical fast-food places are guilty of this. I've had similar outcomes after eating in "regular" brasseries around Paris what, on the face of it, wouldn't be considered "fast food".
So i think for long term weight changes it doesnt really help, at least not via its satiety response. Probably more through displacing other stuff from the diet and improved body composition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHLXank1PPk
Menno's videos are exceptional: science based and backed up by common sense.
This is just more bro-science chained onto bro-science.
I found it needs to be skim milk. Otherwise the fat in regular milk seemed to prevent the meringue from setting up.
Yep it’s the most broscience myth that simply won’t go away.
If you are healthy fat percentage, just use your own weight. If you are a bit highter, and can financially and practically afford it, just use your weight as well. Won't hurt and might actually help a bit.
So it is only a concern for severely obese people. If you are 50+kg overweight, you can scale it down a bit.
Similarly, these obese people shouldn't use the "my current diet - 500kcal a day reduction" which is sensible for already lean bodybuilders. They should just use the "my maintenance diet if I were of healthy weight".
I use this as a bit of a canary. If you see somebody making this basic mistake (like the post you're replying to did), you should be highly skeptical of their other claims too.
My experience from lifting now for 30+ years and seeing thousands of people lift is it is: 1. Genetics.
Everything else is a distant second or third. This was actually something that was widely understood in 90s bodybuilding magazines. Lifting is mostly a display of genetics. That worked when you could sell magazines of genetic freaks working out. Without the magazines you have to sell all this nonsense like 1 gram per lb of protein. Even though I know the early research was 1 gram per kilo and then Americans just changed that to 1 gram per lb. I mean it is just such obvious nonsense that the optimal amount would happen to be the exact integer amount vs body weight that is easiest to remember, how convenient for people who sell protein lol. duh.
I was looking at some photos of myself about 10 years ago. At the time, I had been hitting the gym hard, consistently, and intelligently. I had a huge bench press, squad, and deadlift, and was lifting 4-5 days a week, and managed every facet of my diet.
Now, I'm older, have kids, don't sleep as much, and definitely don't make it to the gym as much. I might lift twice a week - and don't try very hard or do progressive overload at all - and try to get in 3-4 days of cardio.
And I honestly don't look very different. Muscles are roughly the same size. In clothes, most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
Gaining it is hard and slow, but once you do it, you can easily maintain it with very low volume (1 time a week with very reduced volume/weights). And even if you don't train for years/decades, you still rapidly get it back once you start again.
That's why one of the best investments in people health should be weight training during the teenage years/20s. Getting muscles and strength is the easiest at that point of life, and you will reap the benefits for the rest of one's life.
You won't look like Arnold as there are genetic factors at play but people shouldn't be discouraged in thinking they won't be able to achieve a good body.
Another factor, that I think many men forget (I can't speak for women), is their testosterone levels. If you are following everything and have no results I recommend that you have your levels tested. Many men are suffering from Hypogonadism without realizing it. I had this issue for years and when I did my tests, I was at 7.6 nmol/L !
My doctor put me on HCG and it was like night and day.
I assume most fitness influencers on social media are on steroids.
We also don't account for the role of money in these things. Do you make enough to buy good food, afford a decent gym that you can visit regularly, afford a good doctor who can help you manage issues (such as, ahem, low testosterone)?, afford a low-uncontrolled-stress lifestyle? You're good. It's a lot harder when you get hit by roadblocks and don't have the money to resolve them before you've detrained.
Also in first place: steroids.
The bodybuilding magazines loved to talk about genetics because they didn't want to say the quiet part out loud. Nowadays people are more willing to talk about it.
1. Compare only to former yourself (you can't even know your genetic potential until you start training). Did you improve? Yes? Great, continue. No? Change something.
2. Go 2-3 times a week consistently for years, hitting major muscle groups 2-4 times a week.
3. Work as hard as you can (with safe technique). Consistency and effort is the biggest problem why people don't see results. Most people in the commercial gyms are not training hard enough.
4. Progressive overload. Once you get stronger, your weights/reps/sets should also increase.
5. Eat enough protein. Eat calories according to your goal (gaining muscle or losing fat).
6. Reduce stress. Recover. Sleep, sleep, sleep.
It's really quite simple. Tedious, but simple.
I learned this young. Our smallish high school had several exceptional athletes who achieved all-state level in their freshman years. They were great but they had to work for it. In basketball we had the usual mix. But one day Dan showed up:
Dan was short but extremely muscular. He was "recruited" by our all-state level fullback who lived in the same neighborhood (circa 1960's). Dan worked at his dad's gas station and didn't want him playing basketball b/c that was one less worker. but Dan loved basketball and played every chance he got, even though his dad would beat the crap out of him regularly for being away from "work". Coach didn't have to be asked again once he saw Dan play - he was a fricking Bob Cousy on the court. Nobody could lay a hand on him - a truly phenomenal player. Coach talked to Dan's dad, worked out a deal and got permission to try a few games.
Our first game with Dan was incredible: like being a soldier alongside Achilles as he slaughtered Trojans! "Pass the ball to Dansy" and the magic happened!
Dan showed up for two games (Dan won them both) but his dad wouldn't allow more.
So Dan was inherently muscular and strong and very coordinated, far more so than any person I'd ever met, with astonishing reflexes, and also a hell of a basketball player. I asked him if he lifted weights and he said he never did.
I concluded that people are different, sometimes very different. Other than that, maybe regular hellacious beatings can make you an incredible athlete.
Yes, once you get to the level of being able to compete with others, genetic factors will determine who will do better. This is true in any sport.
But that has no bearing on your average person deciding to go to the gym or not. Just about everyone will experience massive benefits from going to the gym regularly. Most don't have the capacity to compete, but that's not what 99% of people care about.
So the #1 factor is not, in fact, genetics, but doing the thing consistently.
As such, this is irresponsible nonsense to be spreading around.
>First published: 31 December 2025
id say, never being sore at all is maybe a sign you dont do enough for optimum results, but frequently being sore means the load is too high. And for health outcomes it probably matters less.
... over doing nothing ...
... initially.
Progress, over time, tends to involve both variation in routine and specific methods, progression, programming, modalities, techniques, form, movements, etc.
One somewhat dubious 10 week study of newbies, as many others have commented, doesn't communicate much.
A further complication is that much of the hypertrophic adaptation is systemic, that is, relates to overall body stimulus and other factors (nutrition, rest, genetics, etc.). Among those effects is the net hormonal response (testosterone, HGH, ILG
Heck, there's a well-known phenomenon called cross education* where an untrained limb will see strength / hypertrophy gains when its opposite is trained:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_education>
(Other / similar terms: Cross-Transfer Effect, Inter-Limb Transfer, Motor Cortex, Activation, Contralateral Training Effect).
Body adaptation to resistance training is weird.
To increase your 1RM at the most optimal pace, yes you need to specifically train the movement so that you can benefit from improved technique and neurological adaptation. But if I do tricep, pec, and front delt isolation exercises at higher reps, to failure, and see significant hypertrophy in these muscles, my bench press will be stronger, other things constant.
It is strength training (not body builder) wisdom to use heavy weights with few reps. Hypertrophy (i.e. body builder) programmes usually call for 8-12 reps, which implies relatively low weights.
Many people advise spending about a year doing more sets of fewer (~5) reps to build strength, and then switch to fewer sets of more reps (8-12) when you want to build muscle mass.
Point being, the idea of doing lighter weights until failure is already kind of there in body building wisdom.
https://www.biopharmadive.com/news/lilly-terminate-obesity-t...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/...
Think about gorillas, who are pretty similar to us - they don't lift weights in the gym, do they?
Yeah, this whole discussion is based on assuming human genetics. Every animal, without any resistance training, will develop an amount of muscle within some range. This can be massive, like for gorillas. Perhaps someday we will have gene editing that allows us to have the muscle building genes of gorillas, so we can all bench 1,000lbs with no training.
I wonder, do gorillas possess the mechanism for stimulating muscle growth via resistance training? How strong could one be with a dedicated training plan and coach?
You won’t gain any significant amount of muscle tissue from taking steroids without training.
This is one of the view places where “if we could we would” is the correct answer. There is so much money in the space of anabolic cheating, the clandestine scientists would’ve already developed it.
All of these benefit from weight training, but depending on the sport, the programming will be very different.
Turns out muscle fibers mostly grow bigger rather than more numerous, and there are different fiber types (slow-twitch vs fast-twitch) that adapt based on how you train. So for the same muscle, an Ironman runner and a guy doing heavy low-rep squats will develop different fiber characteristics: you can't fully max out both.
I'm simplifying, but learning this changed a lot about how I understand exercise at the biological level.
Stereotyping, weightlifters who go for max numbers do 1 set of a million pounds and rest three hours between exercises, while bodybuilders do thirty exercises a day for 8 series of 15 reps each.
These journals keep publishing such studies, because there is nothing better to publish in this branch of, uhm, "science", and I would even argue it's not a bad thing, because something is better than nothing, and it's basically impossible today to do more impressive research in this field (because testing humans is far costlier and logistically more complicated than writing equations and running simulations on your PC). But it's funny that it gets someone's attention.
> although inter-personal coefficient of variation is up to 28.3%
Why does that matter? Isn't the entire point of this study's design to eliminate the impact of the inherent variability between test subjects?
At 40 I recently made this switch in style as well. The weight was getting so high that my anxiety was causing a mental aversion to working out altogether. Consistency is really 95% of exercise so I think this is a reasonable trade-off.
That said, I understand where you are coming from. There's something to be said about facing the fear of the weight head on. I've already done that in my younger years though. I'd much rather avoid injury and get 80% of the benefits.
I think that what you do in the gym will reflect on yourself.
"I will go to the gym, but will not even break sweat, will be fakingly training, just jumping from one machine to another, without plan, execution or dedication" - is the MO of a lot of people in a commercial gym. They are there, but they are definitely running away from hardness. Don't know how well this applies to you.
In life, you need to run to keep the same place. In order to advance, one has to sprint, to put effort. Purposefully slacking and easing often means that practically you are regressing, being left behind.
I understand if you were strong enough, put effort, got the results, and want to scale training down in order to maintain and to concentrate on other more important things. But:
1. You are not that strong. You can definitely build a better strength/muscle foundation that will last the rest of your life. The health retirement fund. It is the easiest to do now, while you are still young. You can do much better.
2. But even if you think that the current level is enough and are only interested in maintaining, the way you do it is clearly suboptimal. Both gaining and maintaining would be easier, faster and more efficient with highter weights and fewer reps. You can also save time because you can do fewer sets in order to get the same maintenance effect. Alternatively, you can keep the same sets/time, but actually progress (or do it faster) instead of staying at the same place. Same cost, bigger psyout. This is the result of doing the right things the right way, instead of giving up and doing something that feels nicer.
Cheers!
1. As a young male, 1 plate bench/squat and 2 plate deadlift is extremely weak. Please strive higher than this. Anyone can achieve this in 6 months of intelligent training max. Many men start this strong untrained. The majority of young men can squat 1 plate untrained.
1. Soreness is not an indication of anything other than that you did a lot of eccentric loading. It doesn't correlate to progress. It is also a sign that your programming is not intelligent; you generally should not be sore after the first few workouts ever again.
1. Yes it is easier mentally, in the sense that doing easy things is easy. This is not a benefit, because doing hard things results in mental strength as much as physical.
It's a mindset issue. If you're 25 and have already declined from 425 to 225 deadlift, that doesn't bode well for your decline into old age. Strength slowly tapers off once you stop lifting, as most eventually do. You want to be as strong as possible while entering middle age so that you can be a strong old man. Strength is like a retirement account in this sense, and in this sense you are advocating for working minimum wage throughout life because it's easier. For a young man, whose training is most efficacious of all age groups, I recommend getting as strong as possible, at least 400 deadlift and symmetrical equivalent in other lifts (but most can achieve 500), and then maintaining that strength as long as possible, not cutting it in half immediately. If you can lift 350 at age 55 you're pretty much guaranteed to never break your hip or have a bad fall; that entire class of osteo related issues vanishes.
"Equalization of Training Protocols by Time Under Tension Determines the Magnitude of Changes in Strength and Muscular Hypertrophy" (2022) https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/fulltext/2022/07000/equal... :
> Abstract: [...] In conclusion, training protocols with the same TUT promote similar strength gains and muscle hypertrophy. Moreover, considering that the protocols used different numbers of repetitions, the results indicate that training volumes cannot be considered separately from TUT when evaluating neuromuscular adaptations.
The focus was on hypertrophy, so 1RM or endurance doesn't matter in their case
With these pre-requisites it almost doesn’t matter what kind of physical activity one does- the muscles will grow anyway. It’s when you are older and/or accustomed to some kind of physical training, that you really noticeably benefit from resistance training.
And still, that ‘almost’ part does a lot of the heavy lifting here. I don’t believe it’s really possible for a couch potato without any experience to correctly assess their 1RM. People with no experience with pain and effort typically can’t push themselves hard enough, so the entire exercise turns to a half-cardio anyway.
And gauging 1 rep max in a bicep curl is especially difficult (saying nothing of a risk of injury).
I understand the complexity and difficulty of researching the subject, but this entire article is no good and is hardly applicable to most of the population IMO
Because your points make sense but it feels like you are arguing against a bit of a strawman, or arguing for a mostly ideal situation rather than current reality?
For overweight and understrength people, is it not very valuable to know that they don't need the extra steps of resistance training to see real improvement in strength and fitness?
And no, I am not looking for a personal fitness advice in scientific research anymore (too late for that), but am rather trying to see its applicability to others, as per my understanding of those others around me.
Most people in the developed world aren’t 22-year old males. A significant part of the population is comprised of the elderly or middle-aged, a lot of those people have pre-existing injuries due to under- (too sedentary) and over-use (blue collar work, youth sports). Approaching physical fitness in those groups has its its own set of requirements and limitations, and I believe that in many cases resistance training is a more safe and efficient choice.
Not saying that the youth and children are unimportant, but typically they are already well covered by the organized sports and pt classes in schools and universities, unlike the adults.
My opinion is that the study is both badly designed (likely in a way to make it easier to implement) and is not applicable to the majority of the population.
Most of the population is untrained, and in many countries a majority is overweight.
I don't think your concern about "correctly assessing their 1RM" matters either - if anything that means the loads are even lower relative to actual 1RM, and their subjects were still getting results.
It may not tell us much about outcomes at the top end, but more knowledge of what advice to give "most people" is important, and if they can get good results at low percentages of 1RM, it seems a lot more likely you'll get people to try.
Is it fair to compare A to B, when the A in question isn’t exactly an A, but rather something closer to B?
The point isn't the precise effect on a given percentage of 1RM, but the relative difference between groups.
Even 1 workout sometimes has so many sets prescribed where I cant imagine all of them were actual failure
Do you have any sources for that? I'm asking because that is a bold statement given the (almost non-) existing literature on pro athlete hypertophy. Especially since athletes in almost every sport don't even care about hypertrophy - unless you talk about pro bodybuilding. And there you have tons of pharmacological interventions, so it's not really easy to paint a picture either. I don't know a single good study performed on a significant set of tested natural bodybuilders regarding hypertrophy.
Studies like this are also aimed at couch potatoes, because that is the normal population, so the results will be applicable to most people, which in turn is important when you want to get funding for your research. In that sense it also doesn't matter that these people will not have reached their full neuromuscular connection compared to actual weightlifters, because most people haven't either. So the results are still relevant. Usually when scientists sell this kind of research to grant departments, they try to provide a benefit to geriatric or otherwise medically impaired people, so that existing treatments may be improved. Studying muscle building itself just for the sake of it in gymbros is not a good strategy unless you want to spend your own money. And this stuff quickly gets very expensive if you want to do it right.
They use a control of the other half of a person, but that is known to have flaws. Even if you train only your left side, your right will get stronger too.
Wait for other studies to find similar effects, especially in trained individuals
"Put the phone away and bust some ass"
I see way too many people (the great majority) completely sabotage their training by putting the weights down when it starts to get hard and get on their phone.
When the weights get hard is when the real set begins. If you don't do the hard reps you deny yourself the stimulus required for adapting to overcome the stress, I.e the growth.
Either do cheat reps and focus on the negative (works with small exercise such as bicep curls) or drop set or super set.
My personal fav is the cheat and negative and I do it a lot for example in cable pulldown. Use a bit of bodyweight to pull it down and then 5s negative.
If you're looking at forced reps, you can do drop sets or add bands (assist rather than resist) to continue lifting for extra reps. For quicker drop sets, use some light plates (2.5# or 5#) which you can rapidly strip from the bar and continue a few reps.
For DB moves you can self-assist in some lifts using your other arm, or have lighter DBs to hand for additional reps.
I've had great results, and every workout I do consists of an exercise I can do at least 20 reps of for the first set, sometimes going up to 50. I can still gain strength by increasing the weight slowly week by week but maintaining a high level of reps. I don't think it takes longer at the gym -- just do 2 sets per motion instead of the more common 3-5. The breaks in between sets at the gym are the real time sink. Plus, you get lean muscle with high endurance, and virtually no injuries. Last tip: put your phone/music in a locker while you're at the gym if you want to both improve your workout, save time, and practice being more present.
Ultimately you’re engaged in an n=1 study and general advice is of limited use. You need to learn what tools are available, how your body reacts to different stimuli, what keeps you consistent etc. Everything is context dependent, trying to find some universally “best” way is a wild goose chase.
The issue is stability. I have to provide the stability for squats. The machine gives me stability for leg press. I won't get the stability I need for further progression, at least not at an optimal rate, just from squatting. I need to do complementary exercises.
Of course there are levels to this, variations within “weight classes”… but in general this holds true.
Also consistency trumps any program.
Getting more muscles leads to more strength (because the strength of the muscle is determined by the cross-sectional area).
But you can definitely be natually strong without having a lot of muscle.
And you can definitely get much stronger without getting much muscle.
In other words, any person with big pecs and triceps will be strong in bench (even without training). But strong bencher will not necessarily have big pecs/triceps to show.
That's the whole premise behind the popularity of the Anatoly gym pranks.
Strength as measured by mostly powerlifting is impacted by a huge factor by the body mechanics, i.e the length of the various body parts, secondarily by tendon attachments and then finally by variations in tissues
But nothing you said invalidates what they said.
Again despite size it's the body mechanics that determine most the physical lifting capability of any individual in any particular lift.
Even around 1900, it didn't matter if you were a genetic freak, you needed a barbell to win competitions.
Not sure how much can be concluded from this.
If you are just training really heavy and doing <8 reps all you are doing is training your strength which is more neurological than it is about muscle mass.
But the number 1 issue I see is that people seem to think exercise is the rocky montage where you just do a bunch of things and get tired or do 100 push ups every day. A lot of pop culture references to exercise look like this. Real world exercise unless you just want to burn calories is much more focused than that but it is also not complicated.
I've f.up my MCL by not listening to my body and I have the stability of a typical 85 year old while I try and 'heal'. It takes longer as you get older (you're probably not 20 year old) and stupid stuff can really take you out.
bodybuilders can build muscle size with high reps and lower weight or lower reps and high weight as long as they do it close to failure with only a few reps in reserve (rir)
powerlifters, or those focusing on strength, usually go for high weight and lower reps because they might be training for a competition that focuses on 1 rep max and/or the body can really only handle so many reps when pushing it at 80-90% of 1 rep max
neither is inherently better but a matter of what goals you have in mind, plus, hypertrophy contributes to overall strength, too
No pain, no gain.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bx3gkHJehRCYZAF3r/pain-is-no...
It's actually fascinating how an ancient proverb could line up with modern science so perfectly.
But yes, if you never train close to failure you will not grow, not past beginner gains, unless you take steroids.
You absolutely can get significant improvements without (much) pain. DOMS during the initial stages is going to be the most uncomfortable part. Once you're past it, you don't need to push yourself to a breaking point, just to the point of mild exhaustion.
This will provide you enough resistance to gain muscle mass and improve the bone density to healthy levels.
Dynomight has a good blog post about this[0], but applied to running rather than resistance training.
[0] https://dynomight.net/2021/01/25/how-to-run-without-all-the-...
Also, I highly recommend getting a physiotherapy-educated trainer for at least several sessions. They know _exactly_ how to make people hurt after exercises :)
No one in the history of lifting has ever achieved an impressive physique via light weights. It simply does not work. The literature, to the extent it exists, is wrong on this and on many other related topics. The traditional view, taken in general, is correct: lift big to get big. Strongmen and powerlifters are very hypertrophied below their fat. They do 3-5RMs. Bodybuilders may do up to 12RMs. No one successful, even moderately, does or ever has done 25RMs because that weight is too low to drive adaptation in the stress-recovery-adaptation cycle.