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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. For what that's worth.
Do you believe what you've read?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
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 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. For what that's worth.
Science progressed a lot since the speculation of yogis
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…
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.
>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.
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.
Your results will suck ass if you have low T.