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> is there any natural advantage of bodybuilding for both men and women? I'm especially curious about the long-term effects of training muscles for hypertrophy

by scythe 6y ago

> is there any natural advantage of bodybuilding for both men and women? I'm especially curious about the long-term effects of training muscles for hypertrophy rather than functional endpoints (strength, power, endurance). It's always stuck out to me that workout guides just treat this as normal — "everyone" wants big muscles, so we should all do painful eccentric reps to stress them out and build up lots of not-so-useful tissue? It's not obvious this is directly comparable to normal exercise. Culturally it bothers me — fitness should be for everyone, but being a gym rat under whatever name (Crossfitter, etc) has become an identity that you either cling to or retreat from, to the detriment of both camps.

astee 6y ago
For naturals, there is significant overlap in the training style that produces maximum strength gains and maximum size gains. Larger muscles are stronger muscles. Studies have shown very similar size gains between groups performing high weight sets and more moderate "hypertrophy" style sets, though training with higher weight maximizes strength gains. One thing not revealed in short term studies, but which I have observed[1], is that training for strength early on eventually produces better gains in size, since when you do shift to "higher rep" training, you will be able to use more weight -> bigger muscles. Regardless, I don't think it's all that important to stress over these details, and progressively overloading (increasing weight/reps) the compound movements (squats/deadlifts/bench press/overhead press) over time is far more important than rep schemes and intensity. For steroid users, the equation changes some, as they benefit more from very high volume, high rep training that pumps the muscles full of blood. Natural lifters cannot recover quickly enough from this sort of training. [1]standard disclaimer about taking this with a grain of salt as I'm just some internet stranger, but I do have > 10 years experience with this
- porb121 6y ago
  regarding [1], you would have a hard time getting agreement from big names in evidence-based lifting circles. e.g. I'm fairly certain Israetel, Nuckols, Helms, and others have all disagreed, and I am less certain but believe others (James hoffman, James Krieger) have too

by scythe 6y ago

astee 6y ago

For naturals, there is significant overlap in the training style that produces maximum strength gains and maximum size gains. Larger muscles are stronger muscles. Studies have shown very similar size gains between groups performing high weight sets and more moderate "hypertrophy" style sets, though training with higher weight maximizes strength gains. One thing not revealed in short term studies, but which I have observed[1], is that training for strength early on eventually produces better gains in size, since when you do shift to "higher rep" training, you will be able to use more weight -> bigger muscles. Regardless, I don't think it's all that important to stress over these details, and progressively overloading (increasing weight/reps) the compound movements (squats/deadlifts/bench press/overhead press) over time is far more important than rep schemes and intensity. For steroid users, the equation changes some, as they benefit more from very high volume, high rep training that pumps the muscles full of blood. Natural lifters cannot recover quickly enough from this sort of training. [1]standard disclaimer about taking this with a grain of salt as I'm just some internet stranger, but I do have > 10 years experience with this

porb121 6y ago
regarding [1], you would have a hard time getting agreement from big names in evidence-based lifting circles. e.g. I'm fairly certain Israetel, Nuckols, Helms, and others have all disagreed, and I am less certain but believe others (James hoffman, James Krieger) have too