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Resistance training load does not determine hypertrophy

physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

131–140 of 371 posts

Re: Resistance training load does not determine hypertrophy

#131
post #4

I thought it was already well understood/researched that it's not the weights that matter, but effectively taking your sets to muscular failure. While one might think "I can do 50 reps with low weights" there is practical aspects to this - you don't wand to spend hours at the gym, and doing heavy weights at 5-7 reps is sufficient as long as you are close or at muscular failure.

There's also the risk of injury. 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 expl…

Asymmetry is normal and you cannot address it (outside of repeatability of movement, aiming for no form degradation during high load).

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.

Re: Resistance training load does not determine hypertrophy

#132

> Healthy, recreationally active but untrained young males 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

Also, it's more difficult to reach true failure with lower load, people tend to stop too early.

Re: Resistance training load does not determine hypertrophy

#133

The group that did lower reps with higher weight, had the better one rep max at the end of the study, but they didn’t measure if the higher rep group had greater endurance. Which seems a bit odd, considering their conclusion is both groups grew the same amount of muscle which fine but if the muscle is adapted for something different in each group, you would want to capture that.

> both groups grew the same amount of muscle which fine but

The focus was on hypertrophy, so 1RM or endurance doesn't matter in their case

Re: Resistance training load does not determine hypertrophy

#134
post #4

I thought it was already well understood/researched that it's not the weights that matter, but effectively taking your sets to muscular failure. While one might think "I can do 50 reps with low weights" there is practical aspects to this - you don't wand to spend hours at the gym, and doing heavy weights at 5-7 reps is sufficient as long as you are close or at muscular failure.

Training to failure for me personally only brought injury and set back my progress by weeks.

Re: Resistance training load does not determine hypertrophy

#135
post #4

I thought it was already well understood/researched that it's not the weights that matter, but effectively taking your sets to muscular failure. While one might think "I can do 50 reps with low weights" there is practical aspects to this - you don't wand to spend hours at the gym, and doing heavy weights at 5-7 reps is sufficient as long as you are close or at muscular failure.

>While one might think "I can do 50 reps with low weights" 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.

I don't know. All cyclists I know seem to have massive thighs. And these are amateurs who don't do any kind of strength training, just hours and hours of cycling every week.

Re: Resistance training load does not determine hypertrophy

#136
The quality of evidence in exercise training is generally pretty terrible. 10 week study with untrained college students tells you very little about what happens over a lifetime of lifting. Personally I’ve found that switching rep range on an exercise is a great way to break through plateaus.

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.

Re: Resistance training load does not determine hypertrophy

#137
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps there's some unmeasured influence, but this study was looking only at the difference between growth within subjects vs between subjects . If the subjects were all "newbies", then that doesn't explain the results. 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 activation energy or stimulus required for hypertrophy in untrained individuals is so low that it’s hard to differentiate the results. Studies like this absolutely need to be done in trained individuals if you want reliable data.

Most people are untrained so this is useful reliable data for most people. However for those who actually care about results: they are trained, or soon will be andthis data doesn't apply.

Re: Resistance training load does not determine hypertrophy

#138

> Healthy, recreationally active but untrained young males 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

Yeah. When was powerlifting seriously I spent months with my deadlift stuck on 525 pounds. I would measure progress by how many times I could just get the weight off the floor, then how far off the floor, etc… The newbie gains were long gone.

Re: Resistance training load does not determine hypertrophy

#139
post #114
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not the mass used. 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 fel…

Anecdotally as someone who strength trained on a recreational basis the last 20 years (and run a marathon just to see if I could), nothing beats heavy lifting. A Strong lifts 5x5 program build around squat, deadlifts, bench and shoulder press can always make me feel pumped for the day!

Same. Finding heavy lifting changed my life if I’m honest. The strength gains, body comp, and how I felt was amazing.

Re: Resistance training load does not determine hypertrophy

#140
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boring is subjective though. For some like me the ideal weight gives endorphins where as too much feels like cortisol. Too light is sort of nothing. So I aim for that "yeah I pushed something" feeling. Which isn't failure.

Let’s be realistic, everyone goes through periods when they just don’t want to work out. 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.

This is key to recognize. Even when you don’t “feel” it you still go and do your program. But, when you do feel good, you go and push.
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