5 ms·

Author here. Happy to provide some thoughts on whatever you find to be crap.

usaphp 10y ago
> "the myth that women have a harder time gaining beginner muscle" Do you have a study to prove that women can grow "beginner" muscles at the same speed as men? I mean common, testosterone levels are drastically different, it will surely affect the muscle growth.
- julianshapiro 10y ago
  Studies: 1: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11890579?dopt=Abstract http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11890579?dopt=Abstract 2: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7558529 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7558529 3: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2991130/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2991130/ Article: http://bayesianbodybuilding.com/natural-muscular-potential-women/ http://bayesianbodybuilding.com/natural-muscular-potential-w... Yes, men have more testosterone, but testosterone is less important to the female muscle development process. In fact, women benefit from higher levels of IGF1 growth hormone, which is critical to muscle growth, as compared to men [1, 2]. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49661582_Circulating_levels_of_IGF1_are_associated_with_muscle_strength_in_middle-aged-_and_oldest-old_women https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49661582_Circulatin... [2] http://press.endocrine.org/doi/abs/10.1210/jcem.81.7.8675561 http://press.endocrine.org/doi/abs/10.1210/jcem.81.7.8675561
  - dragandj 10y ago
    Don't get me started on p values now, but just think about this: "Eight young men (age 20-30 years), six young women (age 20-30 years), nine older men (age 65-75 years), and ten older women (age 65-75 years). The results indicate that neither age nor gender affects muscle volume response to whole-body ST." "Six women and 6 men trained the elbow flexors 3 days per week for 20 wks, one arm performing in each session 3-5 sets of 10 maximal concentric actions on an accommodating resistance device, the other arm 3-5 sets of 8-12 coupled eccentric/concentric actions on a weight training device." "One hundred eighty-one previously inactive healthy Caucasian (N = 117) and African American (N = 54) men (N = 82) and women (N = 99), aged 50–85 yr,<...> Training-induced increases in absolute MV were significantly greater (P < 0.001) in men than in women, though both sex groups increased MV significantly with ST (P < 0.001), and the relative (%) increases were similar. " So, if we are to believe the first two, that were, BTW conducted on miniscule samples, and concentrated on only one exercise of a small muscle, we should expect the same muscle gain in 20 year old men as in 70 year old ladies! I wonder why those old ladies do not feature that much at bodybuilding competitions or Olympic games... The third, which has larger sample, actually says that there is the difference between males and females, which is in accordance with what we can see at every sports event.
    - rjeli 10y ago
      Note also that the elbow flexion muscles (biceps, brachialis) have relatively low androgen sensitivity
jsonmez 10y ago
You want to get the benefits of hard work without the hard work or time. You can't lift for 3 months, read a bunch of shit and try and sell a fitness product. You need to look the part. That means you have to put in the work and the time. Great start, but you don't even look like you lift weights at all. In 5 years you could have something. Your guide isn't bad, but until you look the part and have actually seen what it takes to develop a real physique, you can talk about the theoretical, but not the practical.
- woodandsteel 10y ago
  If you had bothered to actually read the guide, you would have learned that it was not written for the tiny fraction of the population that wants to get super-muscular, but the far larger number of people who would like to gain a moderate amount of muscle.
pliftkl 10y ago
I don't find your advice to be "crap", but I do think it could be a lot simpler. Run stronglifts, 5x5, or starting strength. All of these involve 3 trips to the gym per week, are very easy to follow, and have well defined progressions.
- projektir 10y ago
  These are not easy to follow. When you are already strong and have access to a personal trainer, maybe the are. When your starting point is difficulty lifting the lowest possible weight and you don't know how to configure your deadlift form properly because you actually /can't/ lift the lowest recommended weight, so your bar has a really low starting point, it gets a lot more complicated, not to mention dangerous.
  - avn2109 10y ago
    At least Starting Strength and possibly others cover this case in detail, mentioning something like "You might need to lift a PVC pipe from riser blocks at first."
  - toasterlovin 10y ago
    I think you seriously over estimate the portion of the population who cannot squat or deadlift an empty barbell on day one.
    - dmitriid 10y ago
      You seriously overestimate the portion of population who can do anything, really, with proper form
      - toasterlovin 10y ago
        Form can be learned. The parent was talking about people being too weak to do the lifts at minimum weight.
    - projektir 10y ago
bjterry 10y ago
All in all I found your guide pretty straightforward and agreeable. I think that you overstate its applicability, since it's tailored for very thin people like yourself rather than for overweight people (the majority of people that start training). I do think it's good that you focus on motivational factors, as that is ultimately by far the most important thing to success in fitness. One point is that muscle memory is probably a real effect. There is a very approachable article on it on Strengtheory although the site is currently down. There is a cached version at [0]. Basically, as your muscle grows it creates new myonuclei, which is energetically expensive, but those myonuclei are not lost when you detrain. You need a certain density of mynuclei to support a given volume of muscular tissue. There is also a brief description on Wikipedia with references [1]. Another thing to note is that the main benefit of compound exercises for bodybuilders is that compound exercises are much more time efficient than isolation exercises. With regard to the specific exercises you've selected, a few criticisms come to mind. 1. I don't think oblique work is necessary in a minimal program focused on aesthetics. Most people do not need a specific focus on larger obliques. 2. On your leg day you are progamming 4 sets of squats, 3 sets of hamstring curls, and 4 sets of deadlifts. The hamstring curls are at best unnecessary. The hamstring is the primary mover of the deadlift, and squats also work the hamstrings. It would be better to program barbell hip thrusts to develop the glutes. In general you should add specific glute exercises for an aesthetic-focused routine targeted at both men and women. 3. The seated pulley row and lat pulldown work substantially the same muscles.[2] They should be separated in the workout at least. In general I'm pretty skeptical of bodybuilding split type workouts for beginners. I think it makes more sense for beginners to do full-body workouts, as the hallmark of being a novice is that you can make strength gains every workout. Body part split routines are necessary in part because intermediate lifters require more time for their body parts to recover from a given exercise, so working a body part once a week makes more sense.[5] It is probably not the case that 4 sets is "ideal" for hypertrophy. There are diminishing returns, but not negative returns, and 4 sets is certainly not enough to get "maximum hypertrophy" as you claim in your addendum.[3] Part of the reasoning failure here is that you claim that it's impossible to lift with middle amounts of reps for more than 4 sets, but that is probably not relevant, because what matters for hypertrophy is the number of sets you do to near failure. Being within the magic rep range is not very important.[4] I think that's all the criticism I have time for now. Seems like a good start, and hopefully you can use some of this information to improve the guide. 0: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pl8tNHF92PsJ:strengtheory.com/grow-like-a-new-lifter-again/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pl8tNHF... 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory_(strength_training) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory_(strength_traini... 2: https://www.t-nation.com/training/inside-the-muscles-best-back-and-biceps-exercises https://www.t-nation.com/training/inside-the-muscles-best-ba... 3: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:X6nFkckPI3QJ:strengtheory.com/more-is-more/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:X6nFkck... 4: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:L6EENZsvaZAJ:strengtheory.com/hypertrophy-range-fact-fiction/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:L6EENZs... 5: I believe this is discussed in detail in Practical Programming for Strength Training by Rippetoe.
sixQuarks 10y ago
Welcome to HN, where everybody is an armchair expert and good at only criticizing. It's obvious you put a lot of work into this, and you know what, it may not be the world's best information on building muscle, but what I do know is that you researched this way more than I have, and actually inspired me to start a workout routine. So there's that. thanks for putting this together.

> "the myth that women have a harder time gaining beginner muscle" Do you have a study to prove that women can grow "beginner" muscles at the same speed as men? I mean common, testosterone levels are drastically different, it will surely affect the muscle growth.

julianshapiro 10y ago
Studies: 1: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11890579?dopt=Abstract http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11890579?dopt=Abstract 2: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7558529 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7558529 3: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2991130/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2991130/ Article: http://bayesianbodybuilding.com/natural-muscular-potential-women/ http://bayesianbodybuilding.com/natural-muscular-potential-w... Yes, men have more testosterone, but testosterone is less important to the female muscle development process. In fact, women benefit from higher levels of IGF1 growth hormone, which is critical to muscle growth, as compared to men [1, 2]. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49661582_Circulating_levels_of_IGF1_are_associated_with_muscle_strength_in_middle-aged-_and_oldest-old_women https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49661582_Circulatin... [2] http://press.endocrine.org/doi/abs/10.1210/jcem.81.7.8675561 http://press.endocrine.org/doi/abs/10.1210/jcem.81.7.8675561
- dragandj 10y ago
  Don't get me started on p values now, but just think about this: "Eight young men (age 20-30 years), six young women (age 20-30 years), nine older men (age 65-75 years), and ten older women (age 65-75 years). The results indicate that neither age nor gender affects muscle volume response to whole-body ST." "Six women and 6 men trained the elbow flexors 3 days per week for 20 wks, one arm performing in each session 3-5 sets of 10 maximal concentric actions on an accommodating resistance device, the other arm 3-5 sets of 8-12 coupled eccentric/concentric actions on a weight training device." "One hundred eighty-one previously inactive healthy Caucasian (N = 117) and African American (N = 54) men (N = 82) and women (N = 99), aged 50–85 yr,<...> Training-induced increases in absolute MV were significantly greater (P < 0.001) in men than in women, though both sex groups increased MV significantly with ST (P < 0.001), and the relative (%) increases were similar. " So, if we are to believe the first two, that were, BTW conducted on miniscule samples, and concentrated on only one exercise of a small muscle, we should expect the same muscle gain in 20 year old men as in 70 year old ladies! I wonder why those old ladies do not feature that much at bodybuilding competitions or Olympic games... The third, which has larger sample, actually says that there is the difference between males and females, which is in accordance with what we can see at every sports event.
  - rjeli 10y ago
    Note also that the elbow flexion muscles (biceps, brachialis) have relatively low androgen sensitivity

jsonmez 10y ago

You want to get the benefits of hard work without the hard work or time. You can't lift for 3 months, read a bunch of shit and try and sell a fitness product. You need to look the part. That means you have to put in the work and the time. Great start, but you don't even look like you lift weights at all. In 5 years you could have something. Your guide isn't bad, but until you look the part and have actually seen what it takes to develop a real physique, you can talk about the theoretical, but not the practical.

woodandsteel 10y ago
If you had bothered to actually read the guide, you would have learned that it was not written for the tiny fraction of the population that wants to get super-muscular, but the far larger number of people who would like to gain a moderate amount of muscle.

pliftkl 10y ago

I don't find your advice to be "crap", but I do think it could be a lot simpler. Run stronglifts, 5x5, or starting strength. All of these involve 3 trips to the gym per week, are very easy to follow, and have well defined progressions.

projektir 10y ago
These are not easy to follow. When you are already strong and have access to a personal trainer, maybe the are. When your starting point is difficulty lifting the lowest possible weight and you don't know how to configure your deadlift form properly because you actually /can't/ lift the lowest recommended weight, so your bar has a really low starting point, it gets a lot more complicated, not to mention dangerous.
- avn2109 10y ago
  At least Starting Strength and possibly others cover this case in detail, mentioning something like "You might need to lift a PVC pipe from riser blocks at first."
- toasterlovin 10y ago
  I think you seriously over estimate the portion of the population who cannot squat or deadlift an empty barbell on day one.
  - dmitriid 10y ago
    You seriously overestimate the portion of population who can do anything, really, with proper form
    - toasterlovin 10y ago
      Form can be learned. The parent was talking about people being too weak to do the lifts at minimum weight.
  - projektir 10y ago

bjterry 10y ago

All in all I found your guide pretty straightforward and agreeable. I think that you overstate its applicability, since it's tailored for very thin people like yourself rather than for overweight people (the majority of people that start training). I do think it's good that you focus on motivational factors, as that is ultimately by far the most important thing to success in fitness. One point is that muscle memory is probably a real effect. There is a very approachable article on it on Strengtheory although the site is currently down. There is a cached version at [0]. Basically, as your muscle grows it creates new myonuclei, which is energetically expensive, but those myonuclei are not lost when you detrain. You need a certain density of mynuclei to support a given volume of muscular tissue. There is also a brief description on Wikipedia with references [1]. Another thing to note is that the main benefit of compound exercises for bodybuilders is that compound exercises are much more time efficient than isolation exercises. With regard to the specific exercises you've selected, a few criticisms come to mind. 1. I don't think oblique work is necessary in a minimal program focused on aesthetics. Most people do not need a specific focus on larger obliques. 2. On your leg day you are progamming 4 sets of squats, 3 sets of hamstring curls, and 4 sets of deadlifts. The hamstring curls are at best unnecessary. The hamstring is the primary mover of the deadlift, and squats also work the hamstrings. It would be better to program barbell hip thrusts to develop the glutes. In general you should add specific glute exercises for an aesthetic-focused routine targeted at both men and women. 3. The seated pulley row and lat pulldown work substantially the same muscles.[2] They should be separated in the workout at least. In general I'm pretty skeptical of bodybuilding split type workouts for beginners. I think it makes more sense for beginners to do full-body workouts, as the hallmark of being a novice is that you can make strength gains every workout. Body part split routines are necessary in part because intermediate lifters require more time for their body parts to recover from a given exercise, so working a body part once a week makes more sense.[5] It is probably not the case that 4 sets is "ideal" for hypertrophy. There are diminishing returns, but not negative returns, and 4 sets is certainly not enough to get "maximum hypertrophy" as you claim in your addendum.[3] Part of the reasoning failure here is that you claim that it's impossible to lift with middle amounts of reps for more than 4 sets, but that is probably not relevant, because what matters for hypertrophy is the number of sets you do to near failure. Being within the magic rep range is not very important.[4] I think that's all the criticism I have time for now. Seems like a good start, and hopefully you can use some of this information to improve the guide. 0: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pl8tNHF92PsJ:strengtheory.com/grow-like-a-new-lifter-again/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pl8tNHF... 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory_(strength_training) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory_(strength_traini... 2: https://www.t-nation.com/training/inside-the-muscles-best-back-and-biceps-exercises https://www.t-nation.com/training/inside-the-muscles-best-ba... 3: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:X6nFkckPI3QJ:strengtheory.com/more-is-more/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:X6nFkck... 4: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:L6EENZsvaZAJ:strengtheory.com/hypertrophy-range-fact-fiction/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:L6EENZs... 5: I believe this is discussed in detail in Practical Programming for Strength Training by Rippetoe.

sixQuarks 10y ago

Welcome to HN, where everybody is an armchair expert and good at only criticizing. It's obvious you put a lot of work into this, and you know what, it may not be the world's best information on building muscle, but what I do know is that you researched this way more than I have, and actually inspired me to start a workout routine. So there's that. thanks for putting this together.