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.
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
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.
Nervous system stress/spinal load also plays a big part in maximising the amount of stress you an out a muscle group under. Louie Simmons famously has all his lifters do a fuck ton of belt squats because you can do way more of them than regular back squats because there’s no stress on the lower back and less stress on the nervous system as a result. I guess this is pretty similar to what you’re saying with the fatigue-signal stuff though.
I’d say the belt stuff is more likely due to stability. Your nervous system limits power output when your body is not stable. That’s why bozo ball squats are just freaking dumb
But the belt totally helps with lower back fatigue for sure!
As someone who knows nothing about this field your post was particularly enlightening. I am especially grateful that you have defined most of the terms and acronyms you used.
I don't understand your comment. First you said that cutting carbs to get shredded is bollocks, but then in your very next sentence you said you reduce carb intake during a cut.
People associate carbs as a prerequisite for getting shredded (like grandparent). It’s not. It’s just a way that works well and at some point you will have to cut the carbs because there’s nothing else to cut.
You don't have to stop eating carbs, but not eating carbs has the possibility[1] to save off some gluconeogenesis by subbing fat for muscle while in ketosis, retaining more gains from the bulk.
Frankly that makes no sense in the context of a bodybuilder.
All of those studies listed in the review you posted are targeting either overweight people or "normal weight", both miles away from the body composition of a bodybuilder.
You can't take that and try to apply the same results to someone who's got their diet, exercise, sleep, daily steps, even salt intake dialed in like a bodybuilder does.
We all accept there will be muscle loss when you diet down. Heck, most natural bodybuilders probably have to drop 10kg before they are ready to go on stage.
It’s absolutely wonderful for long distance endurance athletes because you no longer have to either suffer through that period where your body switches to burning fat or otherwise keep taking in carbohydrates at steady intervals. It does however, as you say, absolutely suck for weight training. I did it for about two months whilst I was doing both weight training and triathlon training and my weight training sessions were awful. I reckon I was at least 10%-20% weaker on it than previous, maybe more. Cardio was a blast though.
ketogains is a good protocol. That sub makes me /groan tho.
TKD/CKD are variations which incorporate controlled carb intake to promote rapid glycogen recovery. Most people aren't training hard enough to need this.
Like voytec said, 4-8%. Though i’s argue it’a likely in the higher end for naturals. It’s not sustainable and it’s definitely not healthy for long periods. That’s why we do it only in contest season. You do your shows and get back to something reasonable in terms of body fat.
> Your comment makes no sense in the context of Menno’s work. He’s a bodybuilder, coaches bodybuilders, and his content targets bodybuilders.
I'd say that participants of studies in which they are asked to repeat well-defined weightlifting exercises with accurately measured rests and repetitions are bodybuilders by definition, not "random groups of people".
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.
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
This reminds me of some MMO players reaction when they realize they have been minmaxing their build wrong. Having a large normative population behaving in self-evidence reporting and response is NOT a guaranteed path to the most efficient route. Especially so when the feedback loop is months and the input loop is 3 times weekly.
For instance, the groupthink meta will optimize for time/schedule efficiency, for social dynamics, for all kinds of things which aren't muscle gain per second.
I’ve experienced a lot of this phenomenon since I bought a power rack for my living room and slowly expanded my home gym to include fixed and adjustable dumbbells, MonkeyFeet, ez-curl bar, etc.
All of the online discussion and experimentation revolve around time limited gym workouts that make no sense when I can do a few sets a dozen times a day while taking breaks away from the desk, in between downtime while cooking or doing other chores, or while listening to teleconference meetings.
"The article basically thinks that X don't actually know what they are doing when most actually do."
I see this everywhere (and I suspect this isn't news to anyone). "How hard can farming really be?" "We just have to disrupt with tech synergies." And whatnot. I find this mindset to be offensive and such a self-own by limiting one's understanding of the state of things.
Bodybuilding, and in general fitness, asks for a lot of your time. How can one honestly think that these people aren't constantly endeavoring to optimize?
I imagine there are cases of a local maxima (am I using this correctly?) where something works well for generations and industries get a bit stuck doing it "the good ol' way." But I think that's more an exception than a rule.
I just can't follow this perspective. When someone explains that the conventional wisdom on things I'm good at is wrong, I feel curious, not disrespected. Of course I'm trying to do my best when I'm whittling or system designing - but maybe I'm implicitly working under a constraint that isn't necessary, or maybe my intuitive sense of how well I'm doing is systematically skewed in some way.
> And they don't meassure success by looks* but by performance (eg. new PR)
A great many actually don't care about strength and don't pay a lot of attention to PRs, 1RMs, etc. The goal is, after all, purely a subjective evaluation, and strength in a particular lift is no guarantee that the resulting physique will address the things a bodybuilder is trying to address.
In other words, for competitors the mirror is largely the only tool in the toolbox at the end of the day. I don't think it's as unusual as you suggest.
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. :-)
> most bodybuilders go through a lot of trial and error to find the right diet.
Scientists sometimes go through a lot of trial and error and fail, despite of using n>1, despite of collecting a lot of data and processing it with tricky statistical methods.
Just going through motions of trial and error doesn't guarantee a success. One can hope that he will do a gradient descent and will find a local minimum, but even this is not guaranteed, because for gradient descent you need to identify all the variables and measure all partial derivatives. And do this multiple times, for each step of gradient descent.
> they exist as a community of millions of people all trying things are reporting what works
Millions of flies cannot be wrong? I'm sorry, I cannot resist the urge to bring this phrase.
Lets try more rational arguments and start with the question: could these millions do a search for a global maximum?
1. Most of them do not track their progress, do not write things they do, and just relying on the innate abilities of their minds to learn the best way. So they reports of their results are not reliable. Probably they can be used to seek truth but one needs to be very careful and skillful to do this properly.
2. Just a few of them can measure the real result with high enough frequency. One needs an access to medical diagnostics to learn what their bulges consist of. Is this a lot of muscle fibers or not so much fibers but they are swelled? Why they are swelled? So really they can vaguely suspect what results they got after several months of adopting new training strategy.
3. They do not track failures. If someone tried their methods and failed, he would leave the scene quietly. So if these methods works only for a small part of self selected population, bodybuilders would remain in a blissful ignorance of the fact. It is a selection bias that can be substantial in bodybuilding.
So we know about some successes but we cannot attribute them reliably to a training strategy, because it may be the result of genes or medication or something else. And bodybuilders have incentives to lie: it is more honorable to get big muscles through pain and hard work than through a lot of medication or due to favorable gene combination. Most of them probably even do not lie consciously, they fool themselves while doing their "research" what works and what doesn't.
So I believe that all these millions of bodybuilders are not a reliable global maximizer. Just looking at data generated by them we cannot judge if they had found a global maximum or something else. Though they probably have found some local maximum, but we do not how good it is for a general population.
"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"
>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.
Specifically:
>This is probably the main reason high carb diets are so popular among bodybuilders
"This" meaning the pump, ie. the muscle size being inflated such that it isn't representative of true stength. Strictly speaking "pump" may not be the best word here (as opposed to size) but if you're making such a pedantic point at least say it directly.
"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)
> 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.
> 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.
> 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
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.
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.
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.
"Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy-ass weights." - Ronnie Coleman
I have gained quite a bit of muscle mass after building out a home gym during covid. I'm no scientist but following the Reddit PPL[1] workout and eating lots of protein did the trick for me.
The standard bullshit line in the fitness industry has always been "everyone else is wrong". Practically what every single trainer ever in the world has said.
The reason is because of all the things I have done in my life, lifting is the most trivially simple activity there is. It is as complex as shoveling dirt. The only way to differentiate if trying to make money is to bullshit. Pick the weights up, put them down, eat food. It just not that complicated.
Yup. Everything else is either bull shit or an attempt to optimize. Unless you are a body builder or a pro athlete you really should focus on consistency more than optimization.
Getting 1% better results for the average person is going to be nullified by the beers they drink on the weekend/the multiple days they skip because they dont feel like working out/any number of other normal life actives that are not optimal.
Find a way to exercise that you enjoy it and do it often. After that don't think about it too much.
Recently I've been riding an exercise bike after work while playing a video game on my computer with an xbox controller. Every 5 minutes I hop off the bike and do some weight training then get back on the bike. I ride for an hour. Doing this most weekdays has lead to far better results than when I used to go to the gym because I actually do it everyday/most days and I don't rdread it.
Unless you are a body builder or a pro athlete you really should focus on consistency more than optimization
This is the best general advice I've read on here. Follow a fitness routine, stick with it. Whatever makes that easier for you, that's your secrete sauce.
Another tip in this vein that I've found helpful when it comes to strength training, especially on days you feel tired or unmotivated, is to not count the reps. Just do as many as you can with good form and then stop. Trying to always hit some number creates unnecessary stress and frustration when you can't get there, and causes injury when form breaks down and/or you push too far.
The point is to fatigue the muscle, not do some particular number of reps. If you're feeling good and want to test yourself or go for a PR, that's great, but if it makes you feel bad or you start dreading workouts, stop counting!
While this is better than not working out at all, the only way you're going to get your muscles to grow is by progressively overloading consistently over time, and if you have too many sessions where you aren't pushing more weight or doing more volume than the previous session, you'll be leaving a lot of gains on the table.
Yeah, you’re right of course about progressive overload being necessary for gains. You don’t need to count reps every workout to achieve it though. If you listen to your body and go to form breakdown, are consistent, and eat/sleep well, both the number of reps and weight you can do will naturally go up over time. It’s not at all linear though—depending on biorhythms, there will be ups and downs in the short term. My point is mainly not to sweat it on the many ‘off’ days when you can’t get a PR or might be well below. These are a normal part of the process. The important thing on these days is to just put the work in.
Darn, I can't find it. There's a guy who claims his only form of workout is just moving a massive pile of dirt back and forth in his yard. Significant because he's a pro athlete of some sort but I forget what he does -- NFL, UFC, strongman...
One day I'll stumble upon it again and come back here and share. Just thought it was funny to compare it to shoveling dirt when that's actually what an elite athlete does somewhere out in the world lol
The problem here is that there really are many little optimizations that could be applied to "pick up, put down" and some do work. Injury avoidance and recovery in particular are easy to overlook.
Of course the magnitude of the effect from most optimizations is small, so it's pretty easy for con artists to claim some secret or new breakthrough.
At the very highest levels people want every edge they can get, but it's silly for most of us who aren't devoted to competition to go down these rabbit holes. Pick up / put down / don't get hurt goes quite a long way.
No offence, but as someone who worked in construction, shovelling is actually not simple at all. And working with a pick is even more complex. There are all kinds of optimizations you can introduce to avoid back injury and to maintain a steady rhythm over an eight-hour workday.
This is one of my all-time favorite HN quotes: "Pick the weights up, put them down, eat food. It just not that complicated." Sincerely brought a smile to my face.
> The standard bullshit line in the fitness industry has always been "everyone else is wrong". Practically what every single trainer ever in the world has said.
I find YouTube trainers' flame wars quite enjoyable. They tend to get triggered by comments or other trainers' videos and publish angry (to me - funny) videos in response. Recent clip from Athlean-X (something about "worst fitness youtuber") is a good example. So much energy wasted on nagging.
When I want to listen to someone who appears to know their shit, I put dr. Mike from Renaissance Periodization[1] on.
> lifting is the most trivially simple activity there is
Lucky you. For me, I always hit plateaus after a couple of months, and then in the past have given up several times after no progress over many months.
This time, starting 13 months ago, I'm determined to stick with it, but still it's sloooooow, despite hours at the gym every other day (no exceptions!) putting in the work. So I'm definitely interested in seeing if there's some other approach that might be better -- more reps, higher weights, more/less variety, less rest period, more frequency, ....? Maybe the answer is I just need to be at the gym lifting hard 3 hours a day, 7 days a week.
There's a lot of different strategies you can employ when you hit a plateau. Try de-loading (e.g. 10% less weight) and working back up to the weight you plateaued at. Try adding drop sets after your main sets. Try implementing a periodization program. It could be related to your diet; perhaps you're not eating enough. It could be related to your sleep; perhaps you're not sleeping enough. It could be a result of supporting muscles that are lagging behind the main muscle utilized for a given lift, so do some research into supplemental exercises that could shore up those supporting muscles. Good luck!
You may not see any progress, but that doesn't mean there isn't any.
You are perfecting the moves you are making, and strengthening your bones, ligaments and tendons, which just don't develop nearly as fast as muscles.
Staying at a plateau for a while is sometimes great to avoid injury.
I would argue the complexity is in finding the simplicity. It's very easy to get overwhelmed with all the contradictory advice and information out there and become paralyzed by the fear that you may be dumping months or even years of effort into a sub-optimal plan. You're not wrong about the answer actually being very simple, but it's important not to trivialize the difficulty in arriving at that conclusion for a lot of people (myself included).
Getting healthy and looking good is the base line. If you workout for 6 months and don't see immediate changes you probably did something wrong. If you workout for 12 months and aren't looking better youre not proficient
This 100%, but I think it is also just the proliferation of information today.
99% of the gain is about a very simple set of exercises. I maintain that most people would get a superb musculature with just cycling/running, squats, deadlifts and bench presses (ignoring pre-existing injuries). 4 exercises where the most complex machinery is a bike, and even that can be replaced with running. Doing it consistently is the key.
But then two problems happen:
1. People try to find shortcuts to make things easier. This is basic human nature.
2. While looking for ways of making it easier, a huge pile of salesmen insert themselves into people's attention, peddling the latest program, diet, fad, complex equipment (hello Peloton), etc. At that point, anyone who doesn't have >10 years of experience with their own body will simply be lost and unable to discern true good advice from drivel.
As pointed out before, there's no money to be made, no "value to be added" to 4 dead simple exercises with a one off expenditure. There's no subscription to be sold, nothing can be turned into a service if the equipment lasts several lifetimes. The weights you buy yourself can be passed down to your kids, and they will likely be able to pass it down to their kids. A hunk of chromed steel can last a very long time, the only thing you have to buy is maybe running shoes or gears for your bike.
> most people would get a superb musculature with just cycling/running, squats, deadlifts and bench presses (ignoring pre-existing injuries).
FWIW, you just described the essence of the Tactical Barbell system here. I've been using it to great effect over the last ~4 years. I will probably never touch a different strength and conditioning program as long as I live.
Yeah, but at some point an LP stops being a productive use of time. I prefer wave/block and undulating periodization programs because I never feel like I'm anywhere in the vicinity of failure and I'm always fresh for hard conditioning the day after a strength or hypertrophy session.
The other bit you’re potentially missing is folks just want to emulate the “big” workouts that folks show off on social media. Which conveniently ignores the bread and butter boring stuff that’s actually critical to building effective fitness/whatever.
I know others are suggesting workout here so it thought I'd contribute back. I had a lot of success following Julian Shapiro's guide I'm how to build muscle [1], like so much so that I had to get rid of a few shirts because my arms wouldn't fit anymore.
It's detailed in explaining multiple faucets including nutrition and rest, I didn't follow every source he listed but he claims to have done quite a bit of research regardless everything is listed.
I disagree. I never injected anything, but I was a distance cyclist for many years, ending almost 20 years ago and my legs are still mannish. High reps, low weight can build build muscle on a high-carb diet. What I really don't understand is why cyclists get bulky and runners don't.
You have to put in so much effort to look big that it just does not happen by accident. If you just want to lose the belly all you have to do is stop eating. No exercise required. Resume eating when your body finishes eating the belly.
You really don't have to worry about accidentally building too much muscle. It takes a ridiculous effort. I'm talking about multiple hours of training a day, 6 days a week. If you go and spend an hour in the gym lifting weights 3x a week and do some cardio before each session, you'll get a nicely shaped body with well defined muscles but you definitely aren't going to be even close to looking like Ronnie Coleman, trust me.
I'll go farther, I want to be as strong as I can be, at something near my minimum healthy weight. Weight is wear and tear on my body I don't want. Sadly, I'm very far from that goal... My appetite is just so intense after lifting, it is really hard not to eat big, so I end up dirty bulking and never have cut.
Yep. Maybe I'm lucky but it's a pretty simple formula for me.
Lift weights 3-4 times a week, cardio outdoors 2 times a week. I drink a whey protein shake with creatine after every workout and don't eat more calories than I burn.
My lifts are continuing to increase and I'm putting on muscle. I'm still under 40 so once my testosterone drops I'm sure that'll get harder.
It really depends on your goals. If you have a sedentary job and just don't always want to be the weakest person in the room, something like stronglift's 5x5 or simply starting strength will get you way more bang for your buck (and time).
I've been doing starting strength for about 14 years now and I can bang out a session in 30-45 minutes.
My living space is limited, so I bought a pair of adjustable box dumbbells (5-75lbs) and a skookum collapsible bench. The stowed combo occupies less space than a chair and they give me serious workout mileage: bench press, flies, rows, sit ups, skull crushers, military press, curls, lunges, deadlifts, etc. It's a great starter gym for us mere not-power-lifter mortals. I WFH and can do sets during breaks and boring meetings.
Rogue is the gold standard but I honestly haven't seen any deficiencies with other smaller brands like Rep or Titan Fitness. I don't know your fitness level, but if you have the space I always recommend the basics: squat rack if you have the time (can also function as pull-up and bench), dumbbells, curl bar if possible, and free weights. I'd keep an eye on used/craigslist listings as well, with the pandemic lifting, a lot of people who spent a lot of money on excess equipment will be looking to unload extra equipment.
I've picked up a bunch of things from Titan the past year. The weights and equipment themselves seem fine and will probably stand the test of time.
The one issue I have had with their weight lifting subsidary is shipping Can be a clown show - really banged up boxes, sometimes with holes punched through.
That may be the case with others too - large and heavy items are a problem at FedEx UPS. In fact, my FedEx delivery guy is required to be able to lift more than the people in the distribution center who end up handling these items more times en route. Another issue with shipping is the tie down straps. Titan tapes them over which means the large awkward packages are more difficult to move.
Also, Titan appears not to have any way to send you parts should something have gone missing. I bought a bench (its really nice, love it) and the box was hammered on the way. Though it initially looked like everything inside survived, one small metal plate was missing but absolutely necessary for assembly. After a week Titan sent me an entirely new bench and I had to send the first back. Definite PITA and so wasteful of time/money for all involved.
Just built out a whole Rogue setup last October: rack, bars, bumper plates, bench, etc. Would never recommend anything else. It's the "Apple" of equipment. Yes, its expensive but it will last forever.
I live in NYC and don't have the space to build out a home gym, but if I could the two things I'd love to get would be a heavy bag [1] and a gymnastics stall bar [2]. I have some kettlebells and thicker muay thai jump ropes I'd throw in there too. Practicing on a heavy bag for a even a few rounds is a crazy workout, and there's a lot you can do on a stall bar [3].
There's a pretty good design for barbell training in Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe. Basically, you need a bench and a squat rack, and a platform between the equipment and the concrete floor. He makes it easily out of plywood sheets and horse mats, and off-the-shelf rack, bench and weights. You can also form the rack out of steel channel, wood and bolts, with off-the-shelf pins.
If you buy bumper plates, an olympic barbell, and a decent bench, you won't regret it (if you keep lifting). For about 90% of people, the program in the book is pretty good, too. For guys like me, we probably should use something more like a 50-60% 1RM with more reps, because I plateau really quickly on his program. The descriptions of the exercises are really good, and there are also lots of coaches who will teach it.
As mentioned by others, a full rack is the best get to start with. I long ago got a half rack which is fine for benching alone (has spotting arms) but not for serious squats.
Advise making sure whatever bench you buy to make sure the height off the floor is comfortable for you. I had one that was a little too tall and believe that contributed to some lower back stress.
I'm in a rural area now and once again stuck with no spotter, also older with assorted old lifting and snowboarding injuries. I picked up a hack squat machine to enable me to safely work on squats again while also not having the load sitting on top of my spine.
If you don't train to failure and know how to dump safely, or you always train with a spotter, you can get away with just a squat rack and bench. If you want more safety though you probably want a power cage.
It's expensive but hard to go wrong with Rogue. I've used their stuff in gyms and at home. It's solid. In my experience, great customer service as well. So, if you plan to use that home gym over the long run - invest in high-quality stuff that you won't need to replace after just a couple of years.
I've gotten a ton of mileage out of just a dumbell set. I do all the things most people do with a full bar: squat, bench press, etc. Dumbells are a lot safer for solo workouts.
Please be aware that scientist brad schoenfeld that is being cited throughout the article. Has changed his opinion on some topics and other topics he even did a 180. The human body is very complex system with balances and counter balances. So almost any statement can be true and false, depending on the context.
Edit: Maybe it's unclear Brad schoenfeld is a prominent hypertrophy scientist if he is still changing his mind based on newer science. Then its clearly not as simple as being stated.
Hypertrophy has largely been settled and the main mechanisms and science underneath are well known by now. Call is post-2017.
Source: up 40lb of Dexa scan muscle from 2014-2023, at 15lb greater body weight.
Not rocket science. Strongly recommend Renaissance Periodization (the hundred of hours of lectures on YouTube if that’s your thing, the two main textbooks, the training templates, the meal books, or the meal apps) as a potential vendor if you’re on the simultaneously on the brainier/geekier and more ambitious to reach intermediate or further side of humans.
> Hypertrophy has largely been settled and the main mechanisms and science underneath are well known by now.
If only you would be aware of the different camps of thinking within the (natural) bodybuilding community. Volume vs intensity is the vim vs emacs of their community. Brad Schoenfeld is leading scientist for muscle hypertrophy and if he is changing his mind based on new evidence then would be prudent not to be confident in our thinking.
Yes, that's how science works. The point the comment was making is that it's not enough to be citing a reliable source. That source has said contradictory things, so someone could build an argument on incorrect premises.
> Hypertrophy has largely been settled and the main mechanisms and science underneath are well known by now
No, it's nowhere near this settled. Mechanical tension is universally agreed upon as the main driver, but there are still poorly understood exceptions, like blood flow restriction.
At the risk of being trite, do something athletic on a regular basis. Weight lifting is one way to get there for sure, but there are tons of things which will also do. Regular swimmers for example have great physiques even if they don't lift. The key seems to be to do something you enjoy enough that you'll be consistently active over the course of years.
Are you making a claim that him changing his opinion is a negative (real question, I could not tell if you were making a value judgement from your post).
I don't know enough about that specific scientist, but in general, I tend to respect scientists more when they are willing to change their opinion (assuming it's in light of new evidence and not just on a whim) and admit they were wrong previously. That isn't a bad thing, IMO, that is a valuable trait to have, which is why I tend to listen to and respect those who have that trait more than those who dogmatically stick to an opinion regardless of new information.
As a comment addressing several comment threads here, and what I believe is a fallacy in the article.
The main issue I believe at play is that non-competitive types (eg non bodybuilders) frequently are not very good at assessing how hard they're pushing themselves. Because of that working with 1lb (or very low % of 1RM) is often ineffective because they have a hard time telling if the 99th, 100th, or 120th rep is truly 1 Rep In Reserve (RIR). For a similar reason training "to failure" with a reasonably high % of 1RM means by definition that they're going to 0 or 1 RIR. Low rest makes it easier to truly hit that 2 through 0 RIR range because without sufficient rest you are essentially doing a broken up single set.
Jeff nippard has a bunch of good videos on the subject that pulls from similar studies as the author:
Agreed. This article doesn't try to navigate the nuance around why someone still may actually want to follow a program that sounds like disproven broscience. Whether it's about better understanding your limits, familiarizing yourself with the feel of much heavier weight, or trying to make the most of a very short workout, it often makes a lot of sense to include things that aren't the biological optimal choice.
Jeff Nippard does a much better job a presenting things as a trade-off that you should consider when choosing or designing your program.
WRT making the most of a very short workout time. Jeff recommends (presumably backed by science as that's his MO) for someone to instead do super sets/cycles with non correlated muscle groups.
Eg: Bench, Leg extension, Row, rest 60 seconds -- in a cycle so that by the time you get back to bench you've given the chest/triceps 3-5mins rest.
I highly doubt you're "most" weight lifters tbh. I would call the population of "weight lifters" as essentially anyone who does a workout involving added weight.
That population I suspect ranges from someone doing a 20/20/20 workout with 5lb dumbbells on all 3 moves of overhead press, tricep extensions, and squats. ranging to the guy who keeps perfect logs, preplanned multiweek training blocks with precalculated weights for every set (eg someone running Weiders 5/3/1).
But for every guy running a well crafted program, there's probably 10 guys just doing whatever he saw in mens health/Instagram that week, but with 30 seconds rest cause he wants to "tone".
Maybe. I think it takes a long time for people to learn how hard they can actually go. There's the muscle itself, CNS, and then the mental aspect. All must be trained to hit a true 1RM.
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 cost to the beneficial effect of training to failure. Training to failure greatly increases the amount of fatigue you induce and the subsequent recovery time your muscles need.”
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”.
No idea if there was ever a shred of scientific method behind that statement but it struck me as good common sense wisdom anyways.
There are a couple different definitions of failures
Mechanical failure - your form is being compromised, usually induced by muscular load
Throughput failure - you could maintain form but your cardiovascular capacity is the limiting factor and you are starting to decrease in tempo (either in the eccentric or concentric)
Partial Failure - you use assistance on the concentric or eccentric to continue to do the one that’s still has workload capacity
Each type of failure induces a different level of lactic acid build up, or muscle tearing, and can be increased in different ways. Usually one of them is a limiting factor and is why progressive overload is proven to improve strength and size.
Most of the people I’ve worked with don’t know true failure (within 1-2 RIR [reps in reserve] left) because they’re limited in cardiovascular capacity to even reach failure or they aren’t pushing themselves due to fear of form breakage/injury.
The reality is you shouldn’t be doing 1 rep maxes often, but you should be lowering the weight and experiencing true failure in order to progressive overload properly.
> 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 bailing when things start to get hard. I've seen a lot of people never put additional weight on the bar because they were afraid of their form breaking down when in reality measured incremental load increases are what helps makes one big and strong.
> I think that approach would end up leading to people bailing when things start to get hard.
If you can still maintain form while it's hard, then you haven't reached the limit yet. Velocity of a lift decreases as you approach failure (you're in the "hard zone"), but you should keep going until you either can't complete rep without twisting and cheating, or if you know yourself well enough that you know you'll have to do that on the next rep. Periodically you should try going to actual failure to make sure you know what that really feels like.
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 believe the thinking is more that you're taking an injury risk that gain you nothing compared to stopping and resting, and doing another set once recovered if you want more volume.
Because injury will set you back far more than missing out on a few reps.
Certain breakdowns of form certainly will cause injury. You don't want to round your lower back while dead lifting, but adding a bit of swing to your bicep curls will not.
The idea is that you are increasing your chance of injury because you've hit short term hypotrophy of the CNS/muscle.
"To failure" is a relative term. Someone who has lifting for a very long time knows their body very well. "To failure" some days might mean they don't even finish their warmup.
The reason I started this whole conversation was in response to the quote that failure is “until you can’t maintain perfect form”, which implies it's not a relative term.
> end up leading to people bailing when things start to get hard
Funny you should say that as I remember it coming up in the counterarguments at the time. Both in terms of neuromuscular control and also general personal motivation type angles.
> “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 cost to the beneficial effect of training to failure. Training to failure greatly increases the amount of fatigue you induce and the subsequent recovery time your muscles need.”
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.
I have been building large upper-body muscles with resistance body weight training on the pool. That means pushups essentially, but the steps-area of the pool let me do them with full hanging body weight and with many wide arm spreads.
It's important to have variations in how to position the pushups. I do 30-70 reps depending on difficulty of arm position, usually two or three sets a day max, each set can be a different position. When I feel strong I do reps slowly both on ascent and descent. Due to my flexibiility (a very important factor in having elongated shape big muscles in pecs etc), I also do triceps also in many widths by putting my hands behind me at the pool border and lifting my weight; it is very demanding exercise, also works back and shoulders.
However the most important tip no one realizes for growing muscle, for having resistance, for having tonus and for a real fast recovery comes from India. Apply oil to body (preferrably all of body, leave for 40+ minutes as you sit or meditate, listen to music; use old clothing and wash it separately, oil trashes and stains all, and it quickly ruins any stretch fiber and elastics bands on shorts etc). Coconut oil gives the most mass, good for hot season. Ginger oil good for winter, get south american Buriti oil if you can (mix some drops to coconut, use with utmost caution, observe the effects, how it makes you agitated etc, never use it in summer), brazilian indians used it for going to war, it makes muscles really bulge, The greek used oil for wrestling matches too, and for looking strong. Oil is not all about the shiny effect, it improves muscles tremendously.
I would compare the effect of not applying oil to the muscle parts after a workout to not eating any protein after a workout. It's such a dramatic effect.
I thank thee, I suppose, for not engaging with a downvote like the 4 others in quick succession, and instead doing it with a reply. It seems I bristled the conventional perspective of HN with my anecdotal experience. Of course, anyone could buy some bit of coconut oil and try once, and it'd explain it better than a citation. Call it reproducing study results,
I could offer many medical citations, it is true, even western ones, but the alternative focus of them would possibly attract even more condescension and people mentally labelling my comments as if I was making an argument for using black magic to attract riches into your life.
I once had physical therapist who got quite far in the amateur natural body building world by only lifting 1lb weights. He was getting a PhD in Anatomy(!) and wanted to demonstrate that you don't need to lift heavy to get hypertrophy. Although he did not recommend this approach as the most time-efficient, he emphasized that gains can be made at the extreme end of the low weight-high volume spectrum.
Do you have scientific studies to contrast against theirs, since the whole point of the article is to contrast intuitive "broscience" against what studies actually show?
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.
Yes, it's not really the testosterone that causes hair loss, it's the DHT the testosterone is converted too and there are drugs and topical foams that can prevent that conversion from happening in the scalp. There are other medications and treatments that work differently as well. It's a complicated topic. Also some people just aren't very susceptible to hair loss.
Not really, finasteride with steroids will spike your estrogen (which was already an issue with the extra testosterone) and cause you to get permanent manboobs and other sexual issues IIRC, and if you use yet another drug to block this estrogen conversion it's even more dangerous.
Basically you have the male pattern baldness gene stay away from roids. If you need more motivation, study after study show women are less attracted to bodybuilder physiques anyway.
Imhv the bodybuilding/powerlifting community is pretty open about it once you immerse yourself there.
But, yeah, the non-initiated get a pretty skewed picture about how muscular one can get, naturally. That's a whole another discussion about body perception/dismorphia and societal idealizations.
It is also fairly easy to give an accurate estimation (esp. if fat percentage <10%) via FFMI.[0]
In some natural bodybuilding competitions anyone with FFMI >25 is ruled out automatically because of the high probability of steroid use at that point. Of course a non-trivial amount of natural genetic freaks certainly exist beyond this number and a case can be made that's the whole point of competitive sports: "freaks" competing against each other.
But then again once you are in the highly competitive game it is (nearly) impossible to resist PEDs.
I guess for that reason many different classes/federations exist to choose from.
Steroids are illegal in most countries. You don’t win an award by sharing your illegal hobby in the open.
For perspective, if a top pro shared their exact stack, there would be tons of teenagers who have never lifted do the exact stack. Which, as you mention, would have negative long therm consequences.
I disagree. As it is now, they will strive to achieve a result that is forever unattainable without performance enhancing drugs. In my opinion, this is like people who make millions selling their how to make millions courses.
Yes, steroids are technically illegal, but they are typically Sch 4, and are just about the "softest" kind of illegal. As in, it's pretty trivial to find vendor willing to ship you a kilo of "cellulose" or other paper-thin cover for white powder that will easily skate through customs.
There's near zero enforcement for steroids, so yes it does end up as an open secret.
It’s an issue - a lot of people just want to be decently fit, so they look online for advice. But the people populating forums and putting up blogs are usually bodybuilder types who that are on steroids and have been lifting since they were teenagers. There seems to be a lot of body dysmorphia in the community as well (“The day you start lifting is the day you become forever small”).
The needs and goals of these two groups of people are going to be so drastically different that a lot of the advice is going to end up being counterproductive.
I have been weight training for almost 30 years. I've tried just about every program, split and variation under the sun, and I've seen and practiced for a time fads that have come and gone.
In the last six months, I have changed things up.
I now train with low volume per muscle group (on average, 4-6 sets per muscle group, reps per set between 6 and 12, pushing very hard, close to exercise, not muscle, failure, which means I stop when I cannot complete 1 or 2 additional reps with proper form).
I do full body workouts, averaging 4 workouts a week (I also do jiu jitsu 2 or 3 times a week, and try to run 1-2 times a week). Almost all the exercises I do are machine-based, following the path opened by the late Arthur Jones (if you haven't read his biography, I recommend you at least skim it: it's wild, disorganized and fun).
With this new protocol, I have seen excellent results in terms of strength and muscle growth, with less soreness than I expected. I also increased my protein intake throughout the day to (roughly, I don't use a scale) 1 g per lb of body weight. I find it quite easy to reach this amount by mixing protein powder with Greek yogurt: it is a protein bomb. I have also started taking magnesium glycinate, about 800-1000 mg per day.
As for exercise research, scientists should start, and should have started 30 years ago, adding variance measures to their results. A 3% increase vs 1% when testing competing exercise protocols says nothing. I want to know the variance, because individual variability in response to any stimulus or insult is typically high.
> when I cannot complete 1 or 2 additional reps with proper form
Thanks for mentioning the last part. That "proper form" bit is waaaaaaaaaay overlooked and even the definition of "proper form" can be ambiguous. A lot of people - myself included on SO many embarrassing occasions - tend to cheat out of proper form. This resulted in injuries that have left me permanently unable to do some exercises.
Like many others do, I got frustrated with lack of growth so I would try and push through extra reps or higher weights while neglecting what my body was telling me. I'd read threads like this and see somebody talk about how moving to lower rep ranges suddenly packed on way more muscle, so I'd change up my workout to do the same; except this compromised proper form which then lead to injuries due to the additional stress by heavier weights. Even after recovering from an injury, I would take caution for a few months, get frustrated, and repeat the cycle over again with more injuries.
You talk about variance here and that's absolutely a topic that is not discussed enough. For example I'm a person with very low bone density. This makes heavier lifts even more dangerous when not done with proper form. Someone with good skeletal structure might cause mild injury where someone like me could end up with a permanent disability making the same mistakes. None of these articles or guides say that though. They treat all bodies like with a one-size fits all approach and it's very dangerous.
These days I use a modified Bowflex Ultimate Machine (I've removed the rods and replaced with actual weights using additional pulleys), so everything is controlled by cables. This allows me to keep a somewhat better form due to the angle at which the movements are restricted. It's not as good as proper machine weights, but it's a good trade-off between free weights and machine weights. All my exercises are lighter weight and try to avoid exerting pressure on the spine or other joints. Every exercise is done SLOWLY with careful attention to how much pressure is being exerted on my muscles, tendons, etc. If I can't keep proper form, the weight is too high or I've gone to "failure". No cheat reps. The rep range is generally in the 10-15 area but varies depending on exercise and how much strain I feel during the movement. It's worked very well for me the last 5 years.
"I'd read threads like this and see somebody talk about how moving to lower rep ranges suddenly packed on way more muscle, so I'd change up my workout to do the same" -
Certain things need to be experienced with proper guidance and in the right environment.
Unfortunately, many people on the nerdy side, myself included, think that you can transition seamlessly from reading or listening to applications, but this is not true; there is a large chunk of information that needs to be experienced or guided 1:1.
"Train with the intensity expected of professionals" is different from "train with the intensity expected of professionals in the presence of professionals."
"You talk about variance here and that's absolutely a topic that is not discussed enough" -
Reflecting on variance, individual variability, and the distribution of events and outcomes is lacking in the "reasoning toolboxes" of the vast majority of people. It is remarkable how taking into account variance of responses or outcomes, individuality, and statistical/frequency distribution can improve thinking and reasoning about any kind of problem.
I would say that the virulence of most conversations on sensitive topics could be softened if people thought not in terms of averages or anecdotes, but in terms of statistical distributions.
How do you know whether your increased strength comes from the lower volume, as opposed to just the increase in protein and addition of magnesium supplements?
It is difficult to say with certainty. I would say it is more about the intensity and longer rest periods than the lower volume.
I had in the past periods of high P consumption, but I did not see this noticeable increase in strength and size. The increase in strength and size was noticeable before I started with the heavy magnesium supplementation.
Now I do full-body workouts, and all the workouts are very similar to each other.
Monday, Wednesday (Friday, optional): run 5 miles at noon, jiu jitsu at night (I have a black belt, so my attendance is a bit less structured than in the past).
Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday (Sunday optional): gym time--all exercises: 2 sets, 6-10 reps, close to mechanical failure. Approx 3 minutes of rest between sets.
Lower body: Hack Squat or Smith Machine squat, Romanian deadlifts (with dumbbells or at the Smith Machine), Glute machine, calf raises. Occasionally: donkey kick machine, abductor machine, leg curl.
Upper body: convergent chest press (or incline press or weighed dips), cable fly, chest supported rows of some kind, cable pulls for lats, machine shoulder press, lateral raises with db, triceps push-downs, some type of biceps curls.
You can build muscle on virtually any weight training program. Train at the maximum amount of intensity you can maintain tension under for N seconds, eat protein, get sleep. Even with bad form you'll build something.
There are ghosts in the machine. Genetics play a big factor. Some people are genetic freaks and others are juiced, and the economic incentive is there to tell us that you too can become the Incredible Hulk. You might get lucky, but for many people it's just not true (or practical). This is especially true if you start weight training later in life and not as soon as you hit puberty.
Training to failure isn't required, but it's a useful tool regardless of whether it builds more muscle or not. A lot of things about weight training and body recomposition are subjective, but training to failure is closer to being a useful metric that can help you determine progress. Going to failure does tax your CNS, but this primarily matters only if you plan on training day in and day out. Arthur Jones and Mike Mentzer weren't wrong; you can go several days and even weeks between intense workouts, build muscle, and be fully recovered for the next intense workout. It can still be debated whether the volume approach is better overall, but very short bouts of infrequent intense exercise still works.
Something to be aware of when reading studies on muscle hypertrophy and sports performance is that they are often performed using individuals who are untrained. Whether the subjects are trained or not is a big deal when it comes to understanding what the study ultimately means, and often times a study means a lot less than what people believe. If a study doesn't use genetically identical individuals eating the exact same food and performing the exact same exercises, there's only so much it will be able to tell you. Good luck finding a study of that quality, because they virtually don't exist.
In defense of "bro science", I think most of it is more actionable for the average person even if it's not entirely accurate. You can find studies to justify anything. Regular people just wanting to get a physique are better off simply trying different techniques and finding what works for them. A lot of people give up on weight training because they think they have to do a bunch of exercises they hate. Only do exercises you either enjoy or can tolerate. An imperfect gym routine you perform regularly is better than the perfect gym routine you give up on. Do as many reps or sets as you find effective. Learn from other people and take what they say with a grain of salt. And don't do exercises that are dangerous.
All I would add is that the sooner you acknowledge your genetic limitations the sooner you can start training within them. Maybe you won’t look like Schwarzenegger or Ronnie Coleman, but Brad Pitt in Fight Club is a reasonable target (assuming aesthetics are a goal - they don’t have to be!)
Another fact I came across while reading about Greasing the Groove was that the strongest predictor of muscle growth was total weight lifted over time. So, you lift 5lbs 100 times over a week, or 25lbs 4 times a week, and you get similar growth. I’m sure that there are limits here, but this is the basic idea. If you take longer rests, you can usually do more reps in a day, and lift more weight in a week. I’ve put on around 10-12lbs of muscle this way, from doing light body weight movements somewhat often. I’ve also started taking 5-10 minute breaks between climbs and I’m climbing harder than ever.
There was people doing extreme rep amounts of bodyweight exercises at one point on that logic and writing articles about it, and to test how viable some of the examples were, I for a short period of time (few weeks) aimed for 1000+ bodyweight squats a day. It was brutal. It was possible (with the caveat that it was possible because I was young and was squatting 180kg+ for reps at the time). It took doing sets of 40-100 or so whenever I had a time. I squatted in the meeting room at work. I squatted everywhere.
It seemed to work to an extent (did it too short to get a meaningful idea of long term impact). The main caveat to me that made me go back to my 5 set x 5 rep of heavy weights was simply that it took way too much time.
But a less extreme variant, such as what you describe is absolutely worth considering for people, especially if the realistic alternative is doing nothing instead.
Unless you make very unnatural motions I'm not convinced that'd it'd matter much relative to the increased protection from muscle gain to take more of the load.
But frankly, I don't think anyone will or should keep up those extreme rep ranges anyway - it was brutal and took way too much time.
Much better to load up a bar and get the same work done in a fraction of the time.
Here's a GPT-3 summary because the SNR is low in this article:
SUMMARY: This article discusses optimal program design for bodybuilding by examining the evidence behind rest intervals, training frequency, and training intensity. The article concludes that while traditional bodybuilding bro-wisdom may suggest short rest periods, training a muscle once a week, and sticking to a hypertrophy range of 6-12 reps, the evidence shows that the best program design is dependent on the individual. Rest intervals should be taken according to the individual's needs, with longer rest periods generally being beneficial for muscle growth; training each muscle at least twice a week is recommended for maximum muscle growth; and training intensity should focus on achieving total volume rather than sticking to a hypertrophy range, with a wide range of rep zones potentially being beneficial for muscle growth. Training to failure is not necessary for muscle growth, as the same results can be achieved with submaximal training.
YMMV, but I recommend more people try High Intensity Training (HIT). HIT explicitly contradicts several of the (well-supported) claims in the article, but I've personally found it effective, and I think there's a good case that it's a better fit for most adult lifestyles.
[ETA: Just to clarify, HIT is different from the more widely-known HIIT. This wikipedia article[1] is a good introduction, and the book "Body By Science" is an excellent deeper dive.]
I'm a 40-ish male with a long history of resistance training, and have tried many variations of sets/reps/volume/rest etc over the years.
For a few years now I've been doing a version of HIT, basically single sets (to failure), no (or little) rest between sets, full-body training once a week, supervised by a trainer. It sucks, but it's over quickly.
It's great. I'm significantly stronger than I've been in many years, have remained injury-free throughout (rare for me), and play competitive basketball several times a week without issue (beyond my inconsistent shooting).
The article cites its sources, has solid (for exercise science) evidence backing its claims, and is pretty convincing - if you're a college student with plenty of time, and you're seeking to maximize muscle growth, then yes there's a good case that you should do several workouts a week with more rest between sets.
However, if you're a working stiff who just wants to get it done efficiently, HIT is much easier to fit in a busy schedule. I think it's worth considering for the median person reading fitness articles on HN.
For most people, I suspect HIT is essentially just as effective as the type of protocol advocated in the article, but that's just a hunch and not a claim I could support with anything beyond personal experience.
I did HIT for a long time which made me stronger. But only since I do HIIT I also feel more healthy, my endurance increased and I lost some fat (in addition to getting stronger).
The HIIT I can especially recommend is https://www.12minuteathlete.com/ . And as a disclaimer I'm not in any way connected to that website.
I would add that while I agree HIIT is great, you're not just doing HIIT once/week, but also playing competitive basketball.
The other thing is it's been posited for awhile now, that gained muscle/strength requires less work to keep. You have a long history of resistance training, and presumably gained strength and muscle. Now you just need to be do maintenance to keep what you have while supporting your sport.
I say all this b/c I do something similar. I stopped power lifting once I got older and moved to more HIIT like workouts 3-4x/week. They take maybe 30 minutes each. But, I also train BJJ ~4x/week. Would my HIIT like workouts be so effective if I didn't start very strong and also do BJJ? IDK.
This article is focused on growth in muscle _size_ over growth in muscle _strength_. The two are related, but it's pretty well-established that you can bias your training towards one or the other. You can see the difference between experienced powerlifters and bodybuilders. PLs move heavier weights than BBs, but the latter generally have more muscle mass. I think training for strength has more everyday health benefits than bodybuilding and its training methodology (train large muscle groups with high weight and lower reps ~2x/week) at the novice and intermediate level is much less time-consuming.
It was a revelation for me that I could go in and do 5x5 Stronglift or similar and get it done in 40m 3x a week instead of adding on ever more volume, and I think that time saving is extremely helpful in terms of maintaining compliance with an exercise schedule.
Incidentally, it also helped my muscle size significantly, likely exactly because it was far easier to stay motivated and consistent.
In my experience the carry-over between different rep ranges etc. is significant enough that unless you're aiming to be a competitive lifter or bodybuilder, what matters most is what you can motivate yourself to do consistently. When I was younger that was 5x5, or later 3x5 or 5-3-1 or similar where I could keep adding weight as often as possible. Now I'm doing higher rep ranges because I know what I've been able to lift and I'm not likely to exceed it again (I'm 47; I probably could if I cared enough, I didn't lift that much, barely into competitive levels, but I don't want to spend enough time in the gym to make that happen) and maintaining my health is motivation enough.
I've experienced a very similar effect. The health ROI on your time investment with strength-focused training is pretty incredible. If you could bottle it up and sell it, you'd be rich!
There are significant caveats to the term "strength" though.
Powerlifters use every possible technique to reduce effort (e.g. reducing range of motion) in order to lift heavier weights. Obviously this is a good idea for them since the amount of weight lifted is what wins them competitions. But this is a very specific form of strength which isn't generally applicable.
> I think training for strength has more everyday health benefits than bodybuilding
I think it's the opposite actually, due to the above reason (training for general strength is better for most people than optimizing 3 lifts). If you find a way to reduce bench press range of motion and this gives you an extra 5 kg on the bar, this doesn't make you any healthier.
> its training methodology (train large muscle groups with high weight and lower reps ~2x/week) at the novice and intermediate level is much less time-consuming.
You could train large muscle groups as a novice bodybuilder as well. The main difference is that you don't only focus on increasing the weight lifted, but also on putting as much stress on the muscle as possible at a slightly higher rep count (somewhere between 5 and 15 is typical). Doing sets of 5-15 isn't significantly more time consuming than sets of 1-5, since in both cases most of the time is taken up by resting between sets.
Agreed. However: powerlifting style training has more risk of injury. Pushing the limits of what your body can handle in the 1—6 rep range is riskier than pushing the limits of what your body can handle in the 6—10 rep range. With that said, I much prefer powerlifting style training.
99% of all gym goers are so far from maxing out that the answer is always "more". Unless I'm waiting for the rack you're using, in which case 3RM with 30 second rests are best.
I used to run a half-marathon every single day for close to two years until a bone fracture knocked me out (obvious in hindsight). Added daily weight training after my recovery and I'm now in the best shape of my life (mid 40s). Right after nutrition and sleep, it's the best you can do for well-being and mobility in daily life — No need to go overboard with all kinds of machines, let alone stims.
It stands to reason that motor neuron recruitment failure wouldn’t have any direct effect on muscular hypertrophy.
You don’t (usually) fail your last attempt due to muscle failure and when you do it’s followed by a trip to the hospital.
It’s been a while since digging through primary sources, but last I knew the understanding is that muscular hypertrophy is largely a matter of time under tension. One can, up to a point, increase the tension and reduce the time or vice versa.
In terms of overall training though you have to train for what you want to do. No competitive weightlifter can skip training heavy snatches for example.
I think patience. I have never myself gone above 70 km per week without injuring myself, but I always increase too fast which works fine up to 60-70 km/week but above that I injure myself.
Seems like everything old is new again. I remember reading similar things in misc.fitness.weights about 20 years ago, and a workout routine called Hypertrophy Specific Training was the suggestion. The idea is to do full body workouts every time, starting with 2 weeks of 15 reps, each workout increasing the weight until you reach your max, then 2 weeks of 10 reps, then 2 weeks of 5, then 2 weeks of rest. This workout routine tackles many of the problem points that the article points out.
Another thing I remember from the misc.fitness.weights days is the statement that nothing works for everybody all the time, which applies to diets and workouts. Just because something is working for you right now, does not mean that it will work for someone else, nor does it mean that it will continue working for you in the future as your body changes. Therefore it will always be a journey of exploration to find what works at the current stage in your life.
>Seems like everything old is new again. I remember reading similar things in misc.fitness.weights about 20 years ago, and a workout routine called Hypertrophy Specific Training was the suggestion. The idea is to do full body workouts every time, starting with 2 weeks of 15 reps, each workout increasing the weight until you reach your max, then 2 weeks of 10 reps, then 2 weeks of 5, then 2 weeks of rest. This workout routine tackles many of the problem points that the article points out.
Yes, Bryan Haycock popularized HST. It's a science-backed routine that you can pick up easily, without expensive training programs. Progressive loading increases each session for two weeks to your 15RM on the last session, the next two week cycle you progress to your 10RM, and the final, you progress to your 5RM. The last cycle is the hardest of all, haha.
One of the reasons why I love the Fitbod iOS app and a lot more "sophisticated" apps that use algorithms in general is because they can potentially detect these patterns and incorporate it into a workout.
If you read the Fitbod blog, they have an article or two about some of the patterns they've picked up over the course of observing millions of data points over the past few years.
It's not perfect and perhaps doesn't directly correlate to the size of one's muscles, but they have pretty good insights into what makes a human stronger.
Part of my obsession with this is using algorithms and data to make our lives easier, in a seamless way, without having to constantly check or reread articles (unless it's for fun).
And in such a way that's not intrusive (none of this streaks stuff or constantly checking in to an app every couple of hours).
I'm still curious about actual rep tempo and what role that plays in growth. If maximizing work is the measure of growth than all that really matters is how much acceleration I can put into a weight. Obviously proper form plays a role, just a difficult balance between ensuring proper form and dumping as much force into a rep.
I ascribe to the possible bro science of longer eccentric motion being a useful tactic in my workouts. This is a strange part of a the rep to mechanically measure work given you are essentially going with as opposed to fighting the force of gravity depending on the exercise.
This kind of stuff fascinates me because you would figure we would have solved what the ideal conditions are for a given outcome. But there is too much money is selling snake oil because the actual answers are boring and unpleasant. Loved the read.
On the contrary, if you do it really slow it's a whole other game, and proper form is king, and number of reps is a silly measure because by doing slowly you cannot keep your normal repetitions.
Why start with the "you're wrong and I'm right premise"?. The author suggests that science is the only path forward and especially that their science is the right science to follow.
The best advice I've read is from Ross Edgley in one of his books who said to "Train as often as you need to, not as often as you can."
I just find some of these arguments to be silly. Both groups of people obtain similar results whether one of the groups is doing more or doing it "wrong". There has to be a margin of error in this that shows these arguments largely don't matter.
The body is adaptable. Those doing low intensity high volume vs. high intensity low volume is the same argument of strength improves stamina and vice versa most of the time in a 80/20 (aerobic/anaerobic) fashion. Both groups adapt.
Fitness content on YouTube has improved considerably in the last several years. Check out Jeff Nippard and Built with Science as examples. They also take a more rigorous, evidence-based approach to bodybuilding and make many of the same points that are in this post. For an individual doing training, you can't do a controlled double-blind scientific study on yourself so you ultimately have to find what works best for you. Of course, aligning yourself with empirical evidence is likely to increase efficiency.
I think the points he makes in the article actually perfectly match the "broscience" in powerlifting and olympic weightlifting. There it's all about long rest between sets, low reps, tracking weekly pounds lifted, hitting the same muscles many times per week, etc. I was nodding along at everything thinking "this is obvious isn't it" and had to remind myself he's writing about a different field.
Let's not overlook the role of drugs, not just anabolic steroids, but also drugs for weight loss. Most, if not all, of these impressive physiques online are the result of drug use. Most people will never achieve results even close to that of a dedicated drug user in terms of size, leanness, strength, etc. Before the widespread use of drugs, most people appeared flat. Even a little drugs make such a huge difference.
You really have to respect that Hacker News now has a website offering a free course for working out on its main page. But really I get it, he's worked out in 50 countries and people ask him "how they train in Taiwan or Ecuador." This isn't just a regurgitation of anything you could find in Men's Health. It's new information.
most sane bodybuilding programs, ie training for mass not so much strength, almost all center around 8-12 reps for 99% of exercises. Sometimes you might get to a 4 or 6 rep set if you start approaching closer to max, but generally its about how much weight you can maintain for that many reps, aka time under tension.
One big issue I see is all these people following programs made for people using PEDs and those programs consider the "lack" or small amount of recovery required when on PEDs.
If you are natural you need to very cerfully monitor your recovery and how often you train each muscle. Especially if you get older
There is no mystery to getting strong it's simple physics, you must do work. The problem is most people don't want to put in the work. They don't want to come in lift a heavy bar 3-4 times a week. What they want to do is come in do box jumps and battle ropes and other cool things they see on their favorite influences tictoc video. People expect long term results from a short term effort and wonder why they don't get the results that they want. Lastly most peoples diet sucks and that decreases the results they want significantly.
This completely misses the point of the entire article, which is by/for power lifter and bodybuilders. Obviously there is no way around "lift a heavy bar 3-4x a week." The whole discussion is about whether any of the folk-wisdom/bro-science of exactly how to pick things up and put them down is empirically more effective.
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.
>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.