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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

by LanceH 4y ago

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.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
CyberDildonics 4y ago
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.
- Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
  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
  - chordalkeyboard 4y ago
    semantic pedantry here: "bodybuilder" refers to a sport/discipline where they literally do lift for looks or aesthetics; not performance.
    - Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
      >someone who regularly does special exercises to make their muscles bigger[0] [0]https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/bodybuilder https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/bodyb...
      - sosborn 4y ago
        The difference is that how much weight they lift is a side effect - the real goal is appearance. Unlike, say, Olympic power lifting.
        mindcrime 4y ago
        Semantic pedantry here: power-lifting[1] is not an Olympic sport. Weight-lifting[2] is. Olympic weight-lifting is constituted of the snatch and the clean and jerk. Power-lifting is normally constituted of the "big three" lifts: bench press, squat, and deadlift. There is also an informally defined idea of "power-building"[3] which is sort of a cross between bodybuilding and power-lifting. And then there's crossfit, and strongman, and ... Anyway, enough said about all of that. :-) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerlifting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerlifting [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_weightlifting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_weightlifting [3]: https://www.muscleandfitness.com/routine/workouts/workout-routines/power-building-workouts-more-muscle-and-strength/ https://www.muscleandfitness.com/routine/workouts/workout-ro...
  - CyberDildonics 4y ago
    The article is wrong about what? They said You don't eat carbs for the pump but no one made that claim.
- LanceH 4y ago
  "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" from the article. The main reason for high carb diets is the energy to lift more. It is not for a brief pump. (among bodybuilders)
  - naasking 4y ago
    > The main reason for high carb diets is the energy to lift more. Body builders are physique athletes motivated by aesthetics. Assuming body builders do indeed prefer high carb diets, we currently have two hypotheses here: 1. They've tracked their energy levels and the data convinced them that high carb diets improved their energy levels in the gym, which ultimately improves muscle growth over the long-term (your hypothesis). 2. They are motivated by the clearly visible improvement in aesthetics (article's hypothesis). Gotta say the second seems more plausible on the face of it because it's directly tied to the motivation that defines this group, and doesn't require disciplined long-term data collection.
    - rcarr 4y ago
      > Body builders are physique athletes motivated by aesthetics. They used to be, but now the majority of competitions have actually moved towards sheer size. Arnold Schwarzenegger, among others, is a vocal critic of this so they actually created a new division called “Classic Physique” to address the problem which is now purely dedicated to aesthetics and proportion.
_trackno5 4y ago
Your comment makes no sense in the context of Menno’s work. He’s a bodybuilder, coaches bodybuilders, and his content targets bodybuilders. You’ve just built a straw man argument. When you say “then you stop eating carbs to get shredded” is just bollocks. No real bodybuilder stops eating carbs to get shredded. We (I say we because I am a contest bodybuilder) tend to reduce carb intake during a cut or show prep because it’s the easiest way to get calories down without hitting hunger levels too bad. And keeping protein and fat at reasonable levels are needed to maintain muscle mass and okay health markers. Heck, even fat will get to an unsustainable level when you’re trying to make it to stage sub 8% of body fat
- hackernewds 4y ago
  You seem to know about this subject. What is your take on this article then?
  - ltadeut 4y ago
    If I look at it through the lens of the last 10-years of "science-based" strength/bodybuilding training, there's nothing surprising there. # On rest intervals His description is pretty spot on. The rest times mostly affect the amount of volume you can do (volume is generally defined as #reps x #sets, though I prefer #reps x #sets x weight). That's actually something really useful to know because it allows you to get the required stimulus when you are in an inadequate situation. For example, imagine someone generally trains their legs with barbell back squats and hacks squats. The weight would be fairly high for those lifts. But if you find yourself in a situation where you don't have access or can't use those lifts (injury), you can leverage the lower rest periods to hammer the shit out of your quads with leg extensions or lunges and get the stimulus you need. It doesn't mean you should only do that though. It's pretty well accepted that at some point movements become "stale": your body doesn't recover that well after performing the same movement for long periods (e.g. >6 months), so you need to rotate them out. Not because "the muscle got used to it", but because your joints are aching. Again, understanding how to manipulate rest periods can aid in this rotation. Another thing is time availability. Doing squats and resting 5 minutes might be fine for muscle growth, but you only have so much time you can spend at the gym. So you need to balance that out as well when you are training. # On training frequency Nothing to say there, targeting a muscle more than once a week is pretty much a given. Even ignoring the need for frequent growth stimuli, you can reason about hitting the same body part multiple times a week this way: Say your chest max recoverable volume (MRV) is around 15 hard (0-3 reps from failure) sets a week. If you only train chest once a week, how good can your chest session possibly be when you have to do so much work? 0-3 reps from failure is extremely hard. If you do 4 sets on the incline bench, 4 sets on the flat bench, you still got another 7 sets to go on other exercises. The accumulated fatigue throughout the session makes it highly unlikely you'll really be able to push your chest significantly for the remaining sets. Why not split your training between 2 sessions? 8 sets on one day, and then another 7 sets later in the week. You'll get much higher quality sessions like that because fatigue won't be crushing you. # On training intensity / failure Again, nothing revelatory there. It's well accepted that you want to train close to failure but not necessarily go to failure. That's why auto-regulated training talks about 0-3 reps in reserve (RIR). I've alluded to this in the previous section but I should make it clear: Every exercise you pick has a signal-to-fatigue ratio (referred to as SFR in the literature). Going to failure may be a good way to drive muscle growth, but it's extremely fatiguing. You can't possible survive a 5 week training block if you're going to failure in every single session and exercise. Once you understand that and that multiple rep-ranges work, you can pair exercises that are high-signal and high-fatigue (e.g., barbell squats, deadlifts) with exercises that are high-signal and low fatigue (e.g., leg extensions, leg curls). If you're dieting down and are energy depleted, it would then make sense to avoid high-fatigue exercises like squats (or at least minimize the amount of volume dedicated to them). A common approach is to increase closeness to failure as you progress through the training block, reserving failure or at least 0 reps in reserve to the last week of the cycle. After that you hop on a deload week and drop fatigue to start a new block. You may also want to vary rep ranges and RIR targets because after a while training in the same ranges may get boring :) # What I disagree with Menno I don't agree with the part about getting a pump and soreness. I agree that their presence is NOT necessary to cause muscle growth, but in my experience (and other people in the industry like the folks at Revive Stronger and Renaissance periodization), pumps and soreness are good indicators that a training session was stimulative enough.
AlwaysRock 4y ago
I think the articles actual headline is more fitting, "Optimal program design 2.0". Anyone who reads that will either say what? Or oh this is about body building.
maerF0x0 4y ago
> No real bodybuilder stops eating carbs to get shredded. depends what you mean by "stop". If you mean <100g per day, often less than 50g, then yes they do. They do this for what's known as peaking. They eat less for a week or two prior to "dry out" and then a bunch right before to refill the muscle. Heres the first article to confirm my point. > Carbohydrate intake during the restriction phase varied and competitors reported consuming between 0 and 100 g per day. Conversely, CHO intake during loading was reported to be over 2500 g or 833 g per day https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6315482/#:~:text=In%20the%20week%20prior%20to,6%2C8%2C9%5D https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6315482/#:~:tex.... If by "stop" you mean 0g, then yeah, no one does that cause it's basically impossible save for a fast where you solely eat chicken breast and similar macro'd meats.
- LanceH 4y ago
  I really didn't mean stop as 0g. I mean stop as compared to the "high carb" diet previous mentioned in the article that is apparently done for the pump, which I'm highly skeptical of compared to the lifting benefits of having more glycogen.

by LanceH 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

CyberDildonics 4y ago

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.

Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
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
- chordalkeyboard 4y ago
  semantic pedantry here: "bodybuilder" refers to a sport/discipline where they literally do lift for looks or aesthetics; not performance.
  - Vt71fcAqt7 4y ago
    >someone who regularly does special exercises to make their muscles bigger[0] [0]https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/bodybuilder https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/bodyb...
    - sosborn 4y ago
      The difference is that how much weight they lift is a side effect - the real goal is appearance. Unlike, say, Olympic power lifting.
      - mindcrime 4y ago
        Semantic pedantry here: power-lifting[1] is not an Olympic sport. Weight-lifting[2] is. Olympic weight-lifting is constituted of the snatch and the clean and jerk. Power-lifting is normally constituted of the "big three" lifts: bench press, squat, and deadlift. There is also an informally defined idea of "power-building"[3] which is sort of a cross between bodybuilding and power-lifting. And then there's crossfit, and strongman, and ... Anyway, enough said about all of that. :-) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerlifting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerlifting [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_weightlifting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_weightlifting [3]: https://www.muscleandfitness.com/routine/workouts/workout-routines/power-building-workouts-more-muscle-and-strength/ https://www.muscleandfitness.com/routine/workouts/workout-ro...
- CyberDildonics 4y ago
  The article is wrong about what? They said You don't eat carbs for the pump but no one made that claim.
LanceH 4y ago
"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" from the article. The main reason for high carb diets is the energy to lift more. It is not for a brief pump. (among bodybuilders)
- naasking 4y ago
  > The main reason for high carb diets is the energy to lift more. Body builders are physique athletes motivated by aesthetics. Assuming body builders do indeed prefer high carb diets, we currently have two hypotheses here: 1. They've tracked their energy levels and the data convinced them that high carb diets improved their energy levels in the gym, which ultimately improves muscle growth over the long-term (your hypothesis). 2. They are motivated by the clearly visible improvement in aesthetics (article's hypothesis). Gotta say the second seems more plausible on the face of it because it's directly tied to the motivation that defines this group, and doesn't require disciplined long-term data collection.
  - rcarr 4y ago
    > Body builders are physique athletes motivated by aesthetics. They used to be, but now the majority of competitions have actually moved towards sheer size. Arnold Schwarzenegger, among others, is a vocal critic of this so they actually created a new division called “Classic Physique” to address the problem which is now purely dedicated to aesthetics and proportion.

_trackno5 4y ago

Your comment makes no sense in the context of Menno’s work. He’s a bodybuilder, coaches bodybuilders, and his content targets bodybuilders. You’ve just built a straw man argument. When you say “then you stop eating carbs to get shredded” is just bollocks. No real bodybuilder stops eating carbs to get shredded. We (I say we because I am a contest bodybuilder) tend to reduce carb intake during a cut or show prep because it’s the easiest way to get calories down without hitting hunger levels too bad. And keeping protein and fat at reasonable levels are needed to maintain muscle mass and okay health markers. Heck, even fat will get to an unsustainable level when you’re trying to make it to stage sub 8% of body fat

hackernewds 4y ago
You seem to know about this subject. What is your take on this article then?
- ltadeut 4y ago
  If I look at it through the lens of the last 10-years of "science-based" strength/bodybuilding training, there's nothing surprising there. # On rest intervals His description is pretty spot on. The rest times mostly affect the amount of volume you can do (volume is generally defined as #reps x #sets, though I prefer #reps x #sets x weight). That's actually something really useful to know because it allows you to get the required stimulus when you are in an inadequate situation. For example, imagine someone generally trains their legs with barbell back squats and hacks squats. The weight would be fairly high for those lifts. But if you find yourself in a situation where you don't have access or can't use those lifts (injury), you can leverage the lower rest periods to hammer the shit out of your quads with leg extensions or lunges and get the stimulus you need. It doesn't mean you should only do that though. It's pretty well accepted that at some point movements become "stale": your body doesn't recover that well after performing the same movement for long periods (e.g. >6 months), so you need to rotate them out. Not because "the muscle got used to it", but because your joints are aching. Again, understanding how to manipulate rest periods can aid in this rotation. Another thing is time availability. Doing squats and resting 5 minutes might be fine for muscle growth, but you only have so much time you can spend at the gym. So you need to balance that out as well when you are training. # On training frequency Nothing to say there, targeting a muscle more than once a week is pretty much a given. Even ignoring the need for frequent growth stimuli, you can reason about hitting the same body part multiple times a week this way: Say your chest max recoverable volume (MRV) is around 15 hard (0-3 reps from failure) sets a week. If you only train chest once a week, how good can your chest session possibly be when you have to do so much work? 0-3 reps from failure is extremely hard. If you do 4 sets on the incline bench, 4 sets on the flat bench, you still got another 7 sets to go on other exercises. The accumulated fatigue throughout the session makes it highly unlikely you'll really be able to push your chest significantly for the remaining sets. Why not split your training between 2 sessions? 8 sets on one day, and then another 7 sets later in the week. You'll get much higher quality sessions like that because fatigue won't be crushing you. # On training intensity / failure Again, nothing revelatory there. It's well accepted that you want to train close to failure but not necessarily go to failure. That's why auto-regulated training talks about 0-3 reps in reserve (RIR). I've alluded to this in the previous section but I should make it clear: Every exercise you pick has a signal-to-fatigue ratio (referred to as SFR in the literature). Going to failure may be a good way to drive muscle growth, but it's extremely fatiguing. You can't possible survive a 5 week training block if you're going to failure in every single session and exercise. Once you understand that and that multiple rep-ranges work, you can pair exercises that are high-signal and high-fatigue (e.g., barbell squats, deadlifts) with exercises that are high-signal and low fatigue (e.g., leg extensions, leg curls). If you're dieting down and are energy depleted, it would then make sense to avoid high-fatigue exercises like squats (or at least minimize the amount of volume dedicated to them). A common approach is to increase closeness to failure as you progress through the training block, reserving failure or at least 0 reps in reserve to the last week of the cycle. After that you hop on a deload week and drop fatigue to start a new block. You may also want to vary rep ranges and RIR targets because after a while training in the same ranges may get boring :) # What I disagree with Menno I don't agree with the part about getting a pump and soreness. I agree that their presence is NOT necessary to cause muscle growth, but in my experience (and other people in the industry like the folks at Revive Stronger and Renaissance periodization), pumps and soreness are good indicators that a training session was stimulative enough.

AlwaysRock 4y ago

I think the articles actual headline is more fitting, "Optimal program design 2.0". Anyone who reads that will either say what? Or oh this is about body building.

maerF0x0 4y ago

> No real bodybuilder stops eating carbs to get shredded. depends what you mean by "stop". If you mean <100g per day, often less than 50g, then yes they do. They do this for what's known as peaking. They eat less for a week or two prior to "dry out" and then a bunch right before to refill the muscle. Heres the first article to confirm my point. > Carbohydrate intake during the restriction phase varied and competitors reported consuming between 0 and 100 g per day. Conversely, CHO intake during loading was reported to be over 2500 g or 833 g per day https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6315482/#:~:text=In%20the%20week%20prior%20to,6%2C8%2C9%5D https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6315482/#:~:tex.... If by "stop" you mean 0g, then yeah, no one does that cause it's basically impossible save for a fast where you solely eat chicken breast and similar macro'd meats.

LanceH 4y ago
I really didn't mean stop as 0g. I mean stop as compared to the "high carb" diet previous mentioned in the article that is apparently done for the pump, which I'm highly skeptical of compared to the lifting benefits of having more glycogen.