18 ms·
Resistance training load does not determine hypertrophy
- hazard 9mo agotldr appears to be that if you work to fatigue it doesn't matter if you fatigue out with high weights vs low weights
- chrishare 9mo agoWhen training for muscle size atleast, but not strength. Presumably there are increased injury risks overall when lifting heavy (based on a brief search).
- vlod 9mo agoI agree with this, but for those newbies be careful at what you define as "failure". I've f.up my MCL by not listening to my body and I have the stability of a typical 85 year old while I try and 'heal'. It takes longer as you get older (you're probably not 20 year old) and stupid stuff can really take you out.
- teecha 9mo agofairly new to lifting myself (2+ years taking it seriously) but this thing seems to jive with what I've read across different areas bodybuilders can build muscle size with high reps and lower weight or lower reps and high weight as long as they do it close to failure with only a few reps in reserve (rir) powerlifters, or those focusing on strength, usually go for high weight and lower reps because they might be training for a competition that focuses on 1 rep max and/or the body can really only handle so many reps when pushing it at 80-90% of 1 rep max neither is inherently better but a matter of what goals you have in mind, plus, hypertrophy contributes to overall strength, too
- andoando 9mo agoThere is certainly a difference in a slow twitch vs fast twitch muscle adaptation though https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8139349/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8139349/
- Analemma_ 9mo agoI know it's practically de rigeur to jump into the comments and immediately complain about methodology for any study that makes it to the front page, and I want to emphasize I don't distrust their findings, but I would like to see an equivalent study go out longer than 10 weeks. When I've been taking weightlifting seriously I feel like I don't even start to notice hypertrophy until 8-10 weeks. I feel like 6 months is the actual period where results would matter, to me, but I assume "subject compliance" is pretty difficult to get for such a timeframe, if you're really watching dietary intake and ensuring subjects go to failure (which, to its credit, this study did).
- mf_tomb 9mo agoThis is par for the course with exercise science. It's mostly fake. No blinding, small sample sizes, researchers with agenda, low duration, low funding etc. The good news is that doing almost anything works.
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- throwaway173738 9mo agoDoing almost anything works better than doing nothing.
- f33d5173 9mo agoHow would you blind it? This isn't pharmacy where you can hand out sugar pills.
- mf_tomb 9mo agoYou're right, it's impossible to blind subjects. Researchers can be blinded by having one limb be the control and the other be the test. This design has become more popular recently and it's definitely a small improvement.
- dredmorbius 9mo ago
- armcat 9mo agoI 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.
- xnx 9mo agoWell understood, but not widely known. The myths and superstitions around anything health related are frustratingly durable.
- elevaet 9mo agoWhat about the old gym adage "training to failure is failing to train" - is there any physiological basis for this, or is it mental, or just a myth?
- torben-friis 9mo agoI’ve never heard that, it’s usually the opposite- people do strip sets and the like to reach failure
- wswope 9mo agoThat’s a Pl/Oly mindset rather than a BB/hypertrophy mindset. Totally valid advice in the right context. Long story short, failed reps get much more risky and problematic as the weight you’re lifting approaches your 1RM.
- Moto7451 9mo agoExactly this. When I was in my best shape my deadlift and squat were in/on the way to 2.5-3x my body weight. You don’t want to fail that without a lot of help and safeties. Note for the uninitiated: That figure is not even impressive or competitive with competition lifters. This is just “guy who put in the time and work” numbers.
- weinzierl 9mo agoIf I read this correctly the gist is that it does not matter if you use heavy weights with few reps (common body builder wisdom) or lighter weights with more reps. As long as you always exercise to complete muscle fatigue you'll get the maximum for your genetics (which itself varies a lot).
- torben-friis 9mo agoIt is actually common bodybuilder wisdom to go for the lighter version. Stereotyping, weightlifters who go for max numbers do 1 set of a million pounds and rest three hours between exercises, while bodybuilders do thirty exercises a day for 8 series of 15 reps each.
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- zemvpferreira 9mo agoIt’s worth noting that muscle is not all the same. If you’re just into bodybuilding then sure, proximity to failure is what matters. For athletics though, there still seems to be a big impact in the rep range you work in.
- d-us-vb 9mo agoThis. Muscles can be optimized for volume/endurance or power, or some balance between them. Taking legs as an example: Powerlifters obviously go for pure power, whereas runners need a bit of power but mostly endurance, whereas cyclists need more power than runners but more endurance than powerlifters. All of these benefit from weight training, but depending on the sport, the programming will be very different.
- bethekidyouwant 9mo agoThe 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.
- wiether 9mo ago> 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
- Torkel 9mo agoI.e. No pain, no gain.
- cyberax 9mo agoThis is really terrible advice that just discourages people. You absolutely can get significant improvements without (much) pain. DOMS during the initial stages is going to be the most uncomfortable part. Once you're past it, you don't need to push yourself to a breaking point, just to the point of mild exhaustion. This will provide you enough resistance to gain muscle mass and improve the bone density to healthy levels.
- strken 9mo agoYeah, "no pain no gain" is probably the worst advice I've ever received. It encourages sedentary people to go hard for a week and then quit, which is the exact opposite of what works: starting with consistent easy sessions and adding progressive overload. Dynomight has a good blog post about this[0], but applied to running rather than resistance training. [0] https://dynomight.net/2021/01/25/how-to-run-without-all-the-agonizing-pain/ https://dynomight.net/2021/01/25/how-to-run-without-all-the-...
- astura 9mo agoI think propensity for Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) must be genetic or something because I've never been able to get "past it," even after many years.
- cyberax 9mo agoHave you tried avoiding eccentric exercises? The ones that require you to stretch? Try to do more of the "push-style" exercises. Also, I highly recommend getting a physiotherapy-educated trainer for at least several sessions. They know _exactly_ how to make people hurt after exercises :)
- slashtmpslashme 9mo agoIf it's _painful_ you are doing it wrong https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bx3gkHJehRCYZAF3r/pain-is-not-the-unit-of-effort https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bx3gkHJehRCYZAF3r/pain-is-no...
- cubefox 9mo ago> Twenty healthy young male participants completed thrice-weekly resistance exercise sessions for 10 weeks. Not sure how much can be concluded from this.
- cubefox 9mo agoI think the downvoters need to read up on underpowered statistics.
- amelius 9mo agoWait, why are we figuring this out only now?
- overhead4075 9mo agoA paper doesn't necessarily mean the information is new, but that there is now some/more evidence to support it.
- amelius 9mo agoTrue, but this kind of information is so basic it almost fits in the "world is round" category.
- machomaster 9mo agoFiguring what out? This low-quality study didn't find anything useful nor novel.
- mmmilanooo 9mo agoIt does matter. It's the only objective way to measure progress. A study doesn't negate that.
- justatdotin 9mo agoisnt the 1RM the measure of progress?
- SoftTalker 9mo agoIf that's what you're training for, sure. If you just want to be strong, you can achieve that and avoid the highest injury risk by sticking with 5 reps or so.
- yjftsjthsd-h 9mo agoI don't think so? If last week I could do 50 reps @ 5 lbs, and this week I can do 50 at 6 lbs (or 60 at 5lbs), then that's measurable objective progress
- lifetimerubyist 9mo ago[dead]
- Sporktacular 9mo agoSo resistance is futile?
- claytongulick 9mo agoWhen < 1 ohm
- AstroBen 9mo ago> 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
- olalonde 9mo agoAlso, it's more difficult to reach true failure with lower load, people tend to stop too early.
- samiv 9mo agoFalse, failing to lift is not the same as lifting until failure. Consider, if I load up the bench press to 200kg I won't get a single rep. If I try to rep it I'll fail but I'm not lifting until failure. If I load it up to smaller weight lets say 100kg and crank out rep after rep I'll get much closer to "lifting until failure." When I reach the end, the last rep is a rep I won't make. But I'm still not at a point where I can't do no more, just the weight is too big, so I must reduce the weight and go again. When I do this I get even closer to "lifting until failure". It's like integration, the smaller the infinitesimal the closer to the true value you get when you sum up (integrate) all the parts.
- unaindz 9mo agoWhile technically true getting very close to failure is only useful if you don't need optimal results and lack the time to do more volume. The damage by going to failure will make high volumes maintained over time impossible. Ideally you would leave 1-2 possible reps. I think it's important to train to failure to know your body and learn to gauge your reps to failure but other than that and very little time per week to train it's eventually counterproductive. And if training with lower weights you tend to end very far from failure if just following a program without knowing what you are doing.
- samiv 9mo ago
- Imanari 9mo agoFor beginner lifters that might be true initially, but eventually weight will matter.
- carnufex 9mo ago[dead]
- landl0rd 9mo agoYou can do the goofiest workout you can possibly imagine as a young untrained male and put on muscle. You will do so at roughly max rate regardless of what you do as long as it’s vaguely productive. This isn’t useful research ngl.
- henning 9mo agoYep, lots of different ways to get jacked. That means if you couldn't care less about strength, you can do pretty much any decent exercise that targets the muscle(s) you want to grow in a very wide rep range. Most people want a combination of both size and strength, so you can just do some sets of 5-10 if you aren't already. If you want to have a strong deadlift or squat or whatever, you should train that movement. Not as complicated as fitness social media people want to make it seem: train for what you want.
- esperent 9mo agoI don't think this is true. I've been following a fairly standard progression on several of the standard exercises over the last year and half. I've seen steady progression on leg press, which is a strongly stabilized and isolated exercise. I saw the same rate of initial progression on squats but then it dropped off and I haven't really seen any progression for six months. The issue is stability. I have to provide the stability for squats. The machine gives me stability for leg press. I won't get the stability I need for further progression, at least not at an optimal rate, just from squatting. I need to do complementary exercises.
- henning 9mo agoStability is not that important or else research would show machines give better results than free weights, and they don't.
- esperent 9mo agoIt is vital if you are no longer in your twenties and care about health into old age more than simply results. Lack of stability will cause injury very quickly.
- westurner 9mo agoWhat about Time Under Tension? "Equalization of Training Protocols by Time Under Tension Determines the Magnitude of Changes in Strength and Muscular Hypertrophy" (2022) https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/fulltext/2022/07000/equalization_of_training_protocols_by_time_under.2.aspx https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/fulltext/2022/07000/equal... : > Abstract: [...] In conclusion, training protocols with the same TUT promote similar strength gains and muscle hypertrophy. Moreover, considering that the protocols used different numbers of repetitions, the results indicate that training volumes cannot be considered separately from TUT when evaluating neuromuscular adaptations.
- coffeebeqn 9mo agoSo could I just do one super slow (some minutes) squat per week at like 60% and get all the benefits still?
- user_7832 9mo agoI’m not at all a biology expert, but if the squat is actually pushing you somewhat close to your limit (it’s not super easy), you’ll definitely get stronger. Case in point: isometric exercises. Also: folks who do planks for a few weeks/months.
- chistev 9mo agoFiras Zahabi on focusing on consistency over intensity in training. https://youtu.be/_fbCcWyYthQ?si=gf39MLiqid9e6Szu https://youtu.be/_fbCcWyYthQ?si=gf39MLiqid9e6Szu
- leonflexo 9mo agoI thought hypertrophic focused routines were their own subset. Starting with a high rep, like 20, decreasing something like 2/week while increasing the weight. You technically can increase load, but in my experience it isn't strictly necessary. 10-12 weeks down to 1-2 reps then 3-4 off to reset. This isn't a strength routine, simply for size relative to lift.
- padjo 9mo agoThe 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.
- DiskoHexyl 9mo agoAge: 22+-3 AND with that weight to ffbm ratio not only untrained, but at least slightly (I’m being generous here) overweight. With these pre-requisites it almost doesn’t matter what kind of physical activity one does- the muscles will grow anyway. It’s when you are older and/or accustomed to some kind of physical training, that you really noticeably benefit from resistance training. And still, that ‘almost’ part does a lot of the heavy lifting here. I don’t believe it’s really possible for a couch potato without any experience to correctly assess their 1RM. People with no experience with pain and effort typically can’t push themselves hard enough, so the entire exercise turns to a half-cardio anyway. And gauging 1 rep max in a bicep curl is especially difficult (saying nothing of a risk of injury). I understand the complexity and difficulty of researching the subject, but this entire article is no good and is hardly applicable to most of the population IMO
- vjerancrnjak 9mo agoThey have to start video recording the workouts. Even veterans in this academic field sometimes design workouts that just can’t be done to failure if you’re actually going to failure over 6-12 weeks. Even 1 workout sometimes has so many sets prescribed where I cant imagine all of them were actual failure
- vidarh 9mo ago> I understand the complexity and difficulty of researching the subject, but this entire article is no good and is hardly applicable to most of the population IMO Most of the population is untrained, and in many countries a majority is overweight. I don't think your concern about "correctly assessing their 1RM" matters either - if anything that means the loads are even lower relative to actual 1RM, and their subjects were still getting results. It may not tell us much about outcomes at the top end, but more knowledge of what advice to give "most people" is important, and if they can get good results at low percentages of 1RM, it seems a lot more likely you'll get people to try.
- DiskoHexyl 9mo agoThat is exactly the issue with incorrectly gauging 1rm- if it’s too low, than the supposed ‘resistance’ training with 70-80% of 1rm isn’t actually that. Is it fair to compare A to B, when the A in question isn’t exactly an A, but rather something closer to B?
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- n2y 9mo agoThe study assigned different training regimes to different limbs of the same person. If you think their measured effects do not reflect your own experience, I'd be interested in your fitness status and your result when you do the same. Otherwise it sounds a little like you are disputing the study because it showed something different to your belief.
- metalman 9mo agoI am afraid of trying to lift to failure. never once been in a gym, or trained for anything except marksmanship, but have alwayse been physical, with a lot of what I call "dirty lifts" in the course of getting things done,pushing 60 now. I do notice that after a stretch of realy hard work, and taking a day or two to rest and EAT, I will bulk, but nothing is by the numbers, except the day I took over the old blacksmith shop and we took the gentlmans anvil down, and lifted mine up, each of us grabing one end with one hand, my anvil weighs 460lbs, he was in his 80's and I was in my late 20's. I muscle everything around, steel, wood, round bales,but follow the philosophy of "just because you can, dosn't mean you should" which I believe is especialy true for realy big guys, because while you can build huge muscle, your cartlige and coligen is no better than an size small office guy with that florecent tan, where I have seen in the same frame, a big guy pushing 40, not moving good anymore, and foccused dweeb gettin his lunch zipps right through, doesn't even see the hulk. my point, if I have one, is that nothing counts, unless you can style it
- samiv 9mo agoAs a natty bodybuilder for over 30 years for anyone aspiring towards fitness and starting at the gym my most important advice is "Put the phone away and bust some ass" I see way too many people (the great majority) completely sabotage their training by putting the weights down when it starts to get hard and get on their phone. When the weights get hard is when the real set begins. If you don't do the hard reps you deny yourself the stimulus required for adapting to overcome the stress, I.e the growth.
- MarcelOlsz 9mo agoThis is why having a buddy/spotter is so important. On every lift my friend spotted me an extra 3-4 reps that I would not be able to do if I went just myself and kept going until the last rep was 95% him and 5% me. First guy to automate spotting is an instant billionaire.
- samiv 9mo agoDepending on the exercise you can also do this without a spotter. Either do cheat reps and focus on the negative (works with small exercise such as bicep curls) or drop set or super set. My personal fav is the cheat and negative and I do it a lot for example in cable pulldown. Use a bit of bodyweight to pull it down and then 5s negative.
- dredmorbius 9mo agoIf you're looking at safety, a power cage with the bars set will do the trick. Or swap out BB for DB for presses. If you're looking at forced reps, you can do drop sets or add bands (assist rather than resist) to continue lifting for extra reps. For quicker drop sets, use some light plates (2.5# or 5#) which you can rapidly strip from the bar and continue a few reps. For DB moves you can self-assist in some lifts using your other arm, or have lighter DBs to hand for additional reps. <https://dr-muscle.com/use-drop-sets-build-muscle/ https://dr-muscle.com/use-drop-sets-build-muscle/>
- ismailmaj 9mo agoEven if true, high rep is impractical, otherwise we'd see people doing body weight exercises only reach high levels of bodybuilding. Even around 1900, it didn't matter if you were a genetic freak, you needed a barbell to win competitions.
- wallaBBB 9mo agoYou cannot be strong without being big and you cannot be big without being strong. Of course there are levels to this, variations within “weight classes”… but in general this holds true. Also consistency trumps any program.
- samiv 9mo agoFalse. Strength as measured by mostly powerlifting is impacted by a huge factor by the body mechanics, i.e the length of the various body parts, secondarily by tendon attachments and then finally by variations in tissues
- wallaBBB 9mo agoThats the variation within the classes. And there will always be outliers, but even if you look at bodybuilders in 100+ kg, they are not what you’d call weak even if they don’t optimize for strength.
- samiv 9mo agoRelative to their size a lot of them are weak. Again despite size it's the body mechanics that determine most the physical lifting capability of any individual in any particular lift.
- tejohnso 9mo agoYou start off by confidently stating wallaBBB's statement is false. But nothing you said invalidates what they said.
- machomaster 9mo agoWrong. Getting more muscles leads to more strength (because the strength of the muscle is determined by the cross-sectional area). But you can definitely be natually strong without having a lot of muscle. And you can definitely get much stronger without getting much muscle. In other words, any person with big pecs and triceps will be strong in bench (even without training). But strong bencher will not necessarily have big pecs/triceps to show. That's the whole premise behind the popularity of the Anatoly gym pranks.
- formichunter 9mo agoWhy is this article showing up on New Year's Day like the flock of newbie gym customers attracted to the gym only to quit 30 days from now? Every year without fail. Let's ignore this article for a moment. Overall factors that REALLY matter building muscle: 1. Consistency - Working out each muscle group at least once a week....every week. 2. Diet - Making sure you are consuming enough protein in your diet, approximately 1gram/pound of body weight...or near it or even best you can. Total calories consumed a day should match any online calculator for your age and activity level. 3. Sleep! 4. Sleep! 5. Vary your workout - some weeks high reps low weight and some weeks low reps high weight. Why? Never let your body know what you're doing and shock it as best you can. Always try to exert yourself enough to be sore within 48 hours of a workout. Now multiply this over a few years. Stop reading these studies thinking there is some optimal way! It's just hard work over time. BTW: In winter I bench press 350 pounds or 159KG. I run 10KM or 6.1 miles twice a week and increase it a little bit in summer. I pull my body in two different directions because I love both.
- bookofjoe 9mo ago>Every year without fail. >First published: 31 December 2025
- swalsh 9mo ago"approximately 1gram/pound of body weight" I believe this should be lean mass, not total mass. I think people tried to calibrate this metric since most people don't have scales that can measure composition... but if you're obese, you're going to be consuming more than you need to, which is counter productive if you're obese.
- randysalami 9mo agoI just do light weight nowadays with my strength training. It’s easier mentally. Rather than push myself to go higher on bench, squat, and deadlift, I stick to 1 plate for bench and squat and 2 plates for deadlift. Every single time. Instead of increasing load, I increase rep amount and focus on my form. Honestly, I still find myself sore after most workouts and the simplicity is nice. I’m 25 for reference.
- cjonas 9mo agoI do minimal weight training but in climbing the current consensus is that too many reps increases likely hood of developing an overuse injuries in the tendons. Probably depends on the exercises (climbing is hard on the elbows), but maybe keep an eye for tendonitis
- randysalami 9mo agoGood call out. I’m pretty lazy so I keep the rep ranges low. And not too many sets. Generally I start with a compound lift to hit everything in the muscle group I’m working then move onto accessory lifts to target more granularly. I think I’m lazy enough my risk of injury is low.
- worldsavior 9mo agoYou won't see any progress if you won't push yourself. It shapes your mentality, and running away from work is what will keep you at the same place. Soreness is not a sign of progression most of the time. Bump up the weights, don't run away.
- Deegy 9mo agoThey're increasing reps and therefore total load. That's still a form of progression ('pushing yourself'). This style will slightly favor hypertrophy gains over strength gains. At 40 I recently made this switch in style as well. The weight was getting so high that my anxiety was causing a mental aversion to working out altogether. Consistency is really 95% of exercise so I think this is a reasonable trade-off. That said, I understand where you are coming from. There's something to be said about facing the fear of the weight head on. I've already done that in my younger years though. I'd much rather avoid injury and get 80% of the benefits.
- btwnplaces 9mo agoWhat feels counter-intuitive here is that the variable most people obsess over, load, turns out to matter far less than who you are. Intuitively we expect optimization to work like engineering. Change the input, change the output. Lift heavier, grow more muscle.
- malfist 9mo agoI wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. This is a single study on untrained adult males. They use a control of the other half of a person, but that is known to have flaws. Even if you train only your left side, your right will get stronger too. Wait for other studies to find similar effects, especially in trained individuals
- maieuticagent 9mo agoLift heavy things, lightly. Lift light things, heavily.
- gazpacho 9mo agoHaving only read the abstract... the conclusion makes sense to me. I've operated under the assumption that volume is the most important factor for muscle growth as long as you're lifting something like 1/3 or more of your 1RM. So 12 reps with higher load or 25 reps with lower load are going to be similar volumes (or at least similar enough given the other factors that the two protocols give the same outcome).
- eudamoniac 9mo agoI know this is not in the spirit of HN, but I feel it's my ethical duty to say something about this topic because of the impact the topic has on the psychology of young men. This study is misleading or more likely just false. I do not know what the flaw in their methodology is, but I know it is false, regardless of how many peers may have reviewed it. Please do not start lifting 20-25RM to gain hypertrophy, because it will not work well, and you will not achieve your goals. No one in the history of lifting has ever achieved an impressive physique via light weights. It simply does not work. The literature, to the extent it exists, is wrong on this and on many other related topics. The traditional view, taken in general, is correct: lift big to get big. Strongmen and powerlifters are very hypertrophied below their fat. They do 3-5RMs. Bodybuilders may do up to 12RMs. No one successful, even moderately, does or ever has done 25RMs because that weight is too low to drive adaptation in the stress-recovery-adaptation cycle.
- beezle 9mo agoI only scanned to article but did not see mention of the pre-trial condition of the subjects. Were they very new to resistance training? Or had they been doing it on a regular basis for a number of years? Because when you start out, doing just about anything is going to increase muscle mass
- machomaster 9mo agoUntrained individuals. Typically University students.
- sulam 9mo agoSummary: train to failure. Duh.
- krick 9mo agoNot sure why it gets attention here. The "finding" is the long standing assumption as it is, absolutely nothing new discovered here. It could be notable if it was of some particularly high quality, but here it is 20 untrained individuals doing some dubious exercise regime for 10 weeks and finding out that on average one dubious exercise pattern wasn't particularly better than the other, and overall exercising seemed to be good for all of them, although inter-personal coefficient of variation is up to 28.3%… Like, really? That was the study that impressed 211 upvoters? These journals keep publishing such studies, because there is nothing better to publish in this branch of, uhm, "science", and I would even argue it's not a bad thing, because something is better than nothing, and it's basically impossible today to do more impressive research in this field (because testing humans is far costlier and logistically more complicated than writing equations and running simulations on your PC). But it's funny that it gets someone's attention.
- ernst_klim 9mo agoIndeed. "Science-based" lifting become quite popular in the recent years, but the actual science behind it is quite loose with a lot of methodologically weak studies, small samples etc.
- nodamage 9mo agoThis seems like an overly cynical take. Is there no value in empirically confirming an assumption? Especially in the exercise world where other long held assumptions ended up being bro-science nonsense? > although inter-personal coefficient of variation is up to 28.3% Why does that matter? Isn't the entire point of this study's design to eliminate the impact of the inherent variability between test subjects?
- lend000 9mo agoThis is consistent with my experience. I've had great results, and every workout I do consists of an exercise I can do at least 20 reps of for the first set, sometimes going up to 50. I can still gain strength by increasing the weight slowly week by week but maintaining a high level of reps. I don't think it takes longer at the gym -- just do 2 sets per motion instead of the more common 3-5. The breaks in between sets at the gym are the real time sink. Plus, you get lean muscle with high endurance, and virtually no injuries. Last tip: put your phone/music in a locker while you're at the gym if you want to both improve your workout, save time, and practice being more present.
- password54321 9mo agoOk this isn't a topic for HN so there is a lot of pseudo-intellectual nonsense in thread. Anyone into bodybuilding understands the following: You have two different types of muscle fibres, fast-twitch fibres and slow-twitch fibres. The fibres that get big from weight lifting are your fast-twitch fibres. Fast-twitch fibres only get get into use when you are near muscle failure (when your slow-twitch fibres aren't enough anymore to take on the load of the weight) or in explosive movement. The goal is to overload your fast-twitch fibres by lifting to near-failure as much as possible so you signal to your body it needs bigger fibres. So you want a good amount of reps and sets in. As for the specific exercise you do, this is generally an art-form. You can do pull-ups or you can do lat-pulls for your back. More importantly you want to overload on the exercise. This can come in the form of increasing weight, intensity or reps than you did in your last session after recovery. You can always change your exercise if you plateau. Beyond that it is just rest, diet (especially protein) and genetics (yes this is a big one). I have continuously gained muscle mass over the past 18 months. Consistency may be more important than anything else. If you are just training really heavy and doing <8 reps all you are doing is training your strength which is more neurological than it is about muscle mass. But the number 1 issue I see is that people seem to think exercise is the rocky montage where you just do a bunch of things and get tired or do 100 push ups every day. A lot of pop culture references to exercise look like this. Real world exercise unless you just want to burn calories is much more focused than that but it is also not complicated.
- dr_faustus 9mo agoHas this not been common knowledge for a long time? The argument for high load/low reps has always been that it a) saves time and b) will increase your strength (vs. muscle size) more. Both of which are important factors, especially if you are doing strength training not for cosmetic but health reasons. The number of 8-12 reps to muscle failure has been promoted because a too low number of reps (too high load) seems not to induce as much hypertrophy and is bad for your joints, etc..