They seem to be talking about bodybuilding a lot, but then (at least some) of the discussions move to muscle growth among random groups of people. The two are not the same. Bodybuilders are trying to put on muscle, sometimes in specific places, long after they have stalled in workouts most people would do.
>Going on a higher carb diet increases intramuscular glycogen stores, which attracts a lot of water into the muscles, ~3 grams per gram of glycogen. It’s not uncommon for a guy to gain 4 pounds of what looks like muscle when they go from a low to a high carb diet. This is probably the main reason high carb diets are so popular among bodybuilders and it makes it incredibly hard to see if you’re looking bigger because of your training or because of your higher carb intake.
You don't eat carbs for the pump. It's right there in the paragraph -- you eat carbs to have glycogen, so you can lift more. Then you stop eating carbs to get shredded.
I personally don't like bodybuilding as a sport, but this whole piece was just insulting. If you want to make such sweeping contradictory claims, you have to experiment with people who are already more than experienced in lifting. People who have put on an top percentile of muscle and are trying to eke out just a bit more.
For the sedentary, or the purely cardio oriented, just about any lifting will show improvements. But it just isn't the same as what a bodybuilder needs to progress.
You don't eat carbs for the pump. It's right there in the paragraph -- you eat carbs to have glycogen, so you can lift more. Then you stop eating carbs to get shredded.
Your own quote just says it is an effect, not that it's the purpose.
And he's saying the article is wrong. People love hate bro science but most bodybuilders go through a lot of trial and error to find the right diet. And they don't meassure success by looks* but by performance (eg. new PR). The article basically thinks that bodybuilders don't actually know what they are doing when most actually do. Maybe not all understand the exact science (although some certainly do) but they do know what works, because they exist as a community of millions of people all trying things are reporting what works.
*some do, but the ones that do are not eating carbs
As a comment addressing several comment threads here, and what I believe is a fallacy in the article.
The main issue I believe at play is that non-competitive types (eg non bodybuilders) frequently are not very good at assessing how hard they're pushing themselves. Because of that working with 1lb (or very low % of 1RM) is often ineffective because they have a hard time telling if the 99th, 100th, or 120th rep is truly 1 Rep In Reserve (RIR). For a similar reason training "to failure" with a reasonably high % of 1RM means by definition that they're going to 0 or 1 RIR. Low rest makes it easier to truly hit that 2 through 0 RIR range because without sufficient rest you are essentially doing a broken up single set.
Jeff nippard has a bunch of good videos on the subject that pulls from similar studies as the author:
I highly doubt you're "most" weight lifters tbh. I would call the population of "weight lifters" as essentially anyone who does a workout involving added weight.
That population I suspect ranges from someone doing a 20/20/20 workout with 5lb dumbbells on all 3 moves of overhead press, tricep extensions, and squats. ranging to the guy who keeps perfect logs, preplanned multiweek training blocks with precalculated weights for every set (eg someone running Weiders 5/3/1).
But for every guy running a well crafted program, there's probably 10 guys just doing whatever he saw in mens health/Instagram that week, but with 30 seconds rest cause he wants to "tone".
Please be aware that scientist brad schoenfeld that is being cited throughout the article. Has changed his opinion on some topics and even did had some 180 on topics. The human body is very complex system with balances and counter balances.
"Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy-ass weights." - Ronnie Coleman
I have gained quite a bit of muscle mass after building out a home gym during covid. I'm no scientist but following the Reddit PPL[1] workout and eating lots of protein did the trick for me.
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 know others are suggesting workout here so it thought I'd contribute back. I had a lot of success following Julian Shapiro's guide I'm how to build muscle [1], like so much so that I had to get rid of a few shirts because my arms wouldn't fit anymore.
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.
It's expensive but hard to go wrong with Rogue. I've used their stuff in gyms and at home. It's solid. In my experience, great customer service as well. So, if you plan to use that home gym over the long run - invest in high-quality stuff that you won't need to replace after just a couple of years.
If you don't train to failure and know how to dump safely, or you always train with a spotter, you can get away with just a squat rack and bench. If you want more safety though you probably want a power cage.
I've gotten a ton of mileage out of just a dumbell set. I do all the things most people do with a full bar: squat, bench press, etc. Dumbells are a lot safer for solo workouts.
Interesting read: “Now, it’s not that training to failure is a complete waste of effort. Some research finds training to failure does increase muscle growth compared to the same amount of sets not taken to failure. The benefit seems to simply be the result of the extra reps you do, as completing the same repetition volume by adding more submaximal sets can achieve the same amount of muscle growth. And there is a big cost to the beneficial effect of training to failure. Training to failure greatly increases the amount of fatigue you induce and the subsequent recovery time your muscles need.”
A long time ago I remember reading, probably on misc.fitness.weights or something like that, that the lay crowds misunderstood “to failure”, and that it was intended to mean “until you can’t maintain perfect form”.
No idea if there was ever a shred of scientific method behind that statement but it struck me as good common sense wisdom anyways.
There are a couple different definitions of failures
Mechanical failure - your form is being compromised, usually induced by muscular load
Throughput failure - you could maintain form but your cardiovascular capacity is the limiting factor and you are starting to decrease in tempo (either in the eccentric or concentric)
Partial Failure - you use assistance on the concentric or eccentric to continue to do the one that’s still has workload capacity
Each type of failure induces a different level of lactic acid build up, or muscle tearing, and can be increased in different ways. Usually one of them is a limiting factor and is why progressive overload is proven to improve strength and size.
Most of the people I’ve worked with don’t know true failure (within 1-2 RIR [reps in reserve] left) because they’re limited in cardiovascular capacity to even reach failure or they aren’t pushing themselves due to fear of form breakage/injury.
The reality is you shouldn’t be doing 1 rep maxes often, but you should be lowering the weight and experiencing true failure in order to progressive overload properly.
> A long time ago I remember reading, probably on misc.fitness.weights or something like that, that the lay crowds misunderstood “to failure”, and that it was intended to mean “until you can’t maintain perfect form”.
That seems funny to me. While someone's form breaking down leads to inefficiencies in specific muscle targeting and / or an increased chance of injury I think that approach would end up leading to people bailing when things start to get hard. I've seen a lot of people never put additional weight on the bar because they were afraid of their form breaking down when in reality measured incremental load increases are what helps makes one big and strong.
A good example of "to failure" is when you can't perform a lift symmetrically, or you find yourself cheating by e.g. moving your elbows, lifting your heels, etc.
I believe the thinking is more that you're taking an injury risk that gain you nothing compared to stopping and resting, and doing another set once recovered if you want more volume.
Because injury will set you back far more than missing out on a few reps.
Certain breakdowns of form certainly will cause injury. You don't want to round your lower back while dead lifting, but adding a bit of swing to your bicep curls will not.
> “Now, it’s not that training to failure is a complete waste of effort. Some research finds training to failure does increase muscle growth compared to the same amount of sets not taken to failure. The benefit seems to simply be the result of the extra reps you do, as completing the same repetition volume by adding more submaximal sets can achieve the same amount of muscle growth. And there is a big cost to the beneficial effect of training to failure. Training to failure greatly increases the amount of fatigue you induce and the subsequent recovery time your muscles need.”
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.
I once had physical therapist who got quite far in the amateur natural body building world by only lifting 1lb weights. He was getting a PhD in Anatomy(!) and wanted to demonstrate that you don't need to lift heavy to get hypertrophy. Although he did not recommend this approach as the most time-efficient, he emphasized that gains can be made at the extreme end of the low weight-high volume spectrum.
Do you have scientific studies to contrast against theirs, since the whole point of the article is to contrast intuitive "broscience" against what studies actually show?
I have been building large upper-body muscles with resistance body weight training on the pool. That means pushups essentially, but the steps-area of the pool let me do them with full hanging body weight and with many wide arm spreads.
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.
I thank thee, I suppose, for not engaging with a downvote like the 4 others in quick succession, and instead doing it with a reply. It seems I bristled the conventional perspective of HN with my anecdotal experience. Of course, anyone could buy some bit of coconut oil and try once, and it'd explain it better than a citation. Call it reproducing study results,
I could offer many medical citations, it is true, even western ones, but the alternative focus of them would possibly attract even more condescension and people mentally labelling my comments as if I was making an argument for using black magic to attract riches into your life.
21 comments and not one person mentioned steroids. These are extremely common and are an open secret. All of these bodybuilders who share their routines and meal plans rarely mention what cycles they are on and the long term health consequences of such after their career has finished.
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.
Steroids are illegal in most countries. You don’t win an award by sharing your illegal hobby in the open.
For perspective, if a top pro shared their exact stack, there would be tons of teenagers who have never lifted do the exact stack. Which, as you mention, would have negative long therm consequences.
I have been weight training for almost 30 years. I've tried just about every program, split and variation under the sun, and I've seen and practiced for a time fads that have come and gone.
In the last six months, I have changed things up.
I now train with low volume per muscle group (on average, 4-6 sets per muscle group, reps per set between 6 and 12, pushing very hard, close to exercise, not muscle, failure, which means I stop when I cannot complete 1 or 2 additional reps with proper form).
I do full body workouts, averaging 4 workouts a week (I also do jiu jitsu 2 or 3 times a week, and try to run 1-2 times a week). Almost all the exercises I do are machine-based, following the path opened by the late Arthur Jones (if you haven't read his biography, I recommend you at least skim it: it's wild, disorganized and fun).
With this new protocol, I have seen excellent results in terms of strength and muscle growth, with less soreness than I expected. I also increased my protein intake throughout the day to (roughly, I don't use a scale) 1 g per lb of body weight. I find it quite easy to reach this amount by mixing protein powder with Greek yogurt: it is a protein bomb. I have also started taking magnesium glycinate, about 800-1000 mg per day.
As for exercise research, scientists should start, and should have started 30 years ago, adding variance measures to their results. A 3% increase vs 1% when testing competing exercise protocols says nothing. I want to know the variance, because individual variability in response to any stimulus or insult is typically high.
You can build muscle on virtually any weight training program. Train at the maximum amount of intensity you can maintain tension under for N seconds, eat protein, get sleep. Even with bad form you'll build something.
There are ghosts in the machine. Genetics play a big factor. Some people are genetic freaks and others are juiced, and the economic incentive is there to tell us that you too can become the Incredible Hulk. You might get lucky, but for many people it's just not true (or practical). This is especially true if you start weight training later in life and not as soon as you hit puberty.
Training to failure isn't required, but it's a useful tool regardless of whether it builds more muscle or not. A lot of things about weight training and body recomposition are subjective, but training to failure is closer to being a useful metric that can help you determine progress. Going to failure does tax your CNS, but this primarily matters only if you plan on training day in and day out. Arthur Jones and Mike Mentzer weren't wrong; you can go several days and even weeks between intense workouts, build muscle, and be fully recovered for the next intense workout. It can still be debated whether the volume approach is better overall, but very short bouts of infrequent intense exercise still works.
Something to be aware of when reading studies on muscle hypertrophy and sports performance is that they are often performed using individuals who are untrained. Whether the subjects are trained or not is a big deal when it comes to understanding what the study ultimately means, and often times a study means a lot less than what people believe. If a study doesn't use genetically identical individuals eating the exact same food and performing the exact same exercises, there's only so much it will be able to tell you. Good luck finding a study of that quality, because they virtually don't exist.
In defense of "bro science", I think most of it is more actionable for the average person even if it's not entirely accurate. You can find studies to justify anything. Regular people just wanting to get a physique are better off simply trying different techniques and finding what works for them. A lot of people give up on weight training because they think they have to do a bunch of exercises they hate. Only do exercises you either enjoy or can tolerate. An imperfect gym routine you perform regularly is better than the perfect gym routine you give up on. Do as many reps or sets as you find effective. Learn from other people and take what they say with a grain of salt. And don't do exercises that are dangerous.
I'm still curious about actual rep tempo and what role that plays in growth. If maximizing work is the measure of growth than all that really matters is how much acceleration I can put into a weight. Obviously proper form plays a role, just a difficult balance between ensuring proper form and dumping as much force into a rep.
I ascribe to the possible bro science of longer eccentric motion being a useful tactic in my workouts. This is a strange part of a the rep to mechanically measure work given you are essentially going with as opposed to fighting the force of gravity depending on the exercise.
This kind of stuff fascinates me because you would figure we would have solved what the ideal conditions are for a given outcome. But there is too much money is selling snake oil because the actual answers are boring and unpleasant. Loved the read.
On the contrary, if you do it really slow it's a whole other game, and proper form is king, and number of reps is a silly measure because by doing slowly you cannot keep your normal repetitions.
I used to run a half-marathon every single day for close to two years until a bone fracture knocked me out (obvious in hindsight). Added daily weight training after my recovery and I'm now in the best shape of my life (mid 40s). Right after nutrition and sleep, it's the best you can do for well-being and mobility in daily life.
Another fact I came across while reading about Greasing the Groove was that the strongest predictor of muscle growth was total weight lifted over time. So, you lift 5lbs 100 times over a week, or 25lbs 4 times a week, and you get similar growth. I’m sure that there are limits here, but this is the basic idea. If you take longer rests, you can usually do more reps in a day, and lift more weight in a week. I’ve put on around 10-12lbs of muscle this way, from doing light body weight movements somewhat often. I’ve also started taking 5-10 minute breaks between climbs and I’m climbing harder than ever.
There was people doing extreme rep amounts of bodyweight exercises at one point on that logic and writing articles about it, and to test how viable some of the examples were, I for a short period of time (few weeks) aimed for 1000+ bodyweight squats a day. It was brutal. It was possible (with the caveat that it was possible because I was young and was squatting 180kg+ for reps at the time). It took doing sets of 40-100 or so whenever I had a time. I squatted in the meeting room at work. I squatted everywhere.
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.
This article is focused on growth in muscle _size_ over growth in muscle _strength_. The two are related, but it's pretty well-established that you can bias your training towards one or the other. You can see the difference between experienced powerlifters and bodybuilders. PLs move heavier weights than BBs, but the latter generally have more muscle mass. I think training for strength has more everyday health benefits than bodybuilding and 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.
It was a revelation for me that I could go in and do 5x5 Stronglift or similar and get it done in 40m 3x a week instead of adding on ever more volume, and I think that time saving is extremely helpful in terms of maintaining compliance with an exercise schedule.
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.
There is no mystery to getting strong it's simple physics, you must do work. The problem is most people don't want to put in the work. They don't want to come in lift a heavy bar 3-4 times a week. What they want to do is come in do box jumps and battle ropes and other cool things they see on their favorite influences tictoc video. People expect long term results from a short term effort and wonder why they don't get the results that they want. Lastly most peoples diet sucks and that decreases the results they want significantly.
most sane bodybuilding programs, ie training for mass not so much strength, almost all center around 8-12 reps for 99% of exercises. Sometimes you might get to a 4 or 6 rep set if you start approaching closer to max, but generally its about how much weight you can maintain for that many reps, aka time under tension.
It stands to reason that motor neuron recruitment failure wouldn’t have any direct effect on muscular hypertrophy.
You don’t (usually) fail your last attempt due to muscle failure and when you do it’s followed by a trip to the hospital.
It’s been a while since digging through primary sources, but last I knew the understanding is that muscular hypertrophy is largely a matter of time under tension. One can, up to a point, increase the tension and reduce the time or vice versa.
In terms of overall training though you have to train for what you want to do. No competitive weightlifter can skip training heavy snatches for example.
I read in a yoga book that muscle growth (and physical cultivation in general) occurs through the movement of a kind of psychic energy (called prana, sati, awareness or something). And that exercise is simply a way of moving that energy around.
>Going on a higher carb diet increases intramuscular glycogen stores, which attracts a lot of water into the muscles, ~3 grams per gram of glycogen. It’s not uncommon for a guy to gain 4 pounds of what looks like muscle when they go from a low to a high carb diet. This is probably the main reason high carb diets are so popular among bodybuilders and it makes it incredibly hard to see if you’re looking bigger because of your training or because of your higher carb intake.
You don't eat carbs for the pump. It's right there in the paragraph -- you eat carbs to have glycogen, so you can lift more. Then you stop eating carbs to get shredded.
I personally don't like bodybuilding as a sport, but this whole piece was just insulting. If you want to make such sweeping contradictory claims, you have to experiment with people who are already more than experienced in lifting. People who have put on an top percentile of muscle and are trying to eke out just a bit more.
For the sedentary, or the purely cardio oriented, just about any lifting will show improvements. But it just isn't the same as what a bodybuilder needs to progress.
reply