Hypertrophy Training. It's not that complicated

TL;DR

  • Learn to recognize and keep yourself away from the traps of black and white thinking in regards to training.
  • For the most part, there isn’t a right or wrong way to train. As long as you structure your programming within basic guidelines you can make a good high intensity, high volume, or high-frequency program by just strategically manipulating and adjusting training variables.
  • Guidelines aren't rules. If you stay consistent with your training long enough while logging and manipulating training variables over time, you'll eventually find your own "Optimal".
  • Evidence-Based Training Guidelines are simple and are all about getting you in a ballpark of the right place to start so that you can adjust from there.
  • You are not Brad Schoenfeld. Jumping ship on your programs in favor of new, unreproduced or unapplied research you found/read yourself will just leave you spinning your wheels.
  • As will looking at guidelines as absolute rules and/or holding dogmatic or extreme viewpoints fueled by personal bias which keep you from exploring other training strategies.
This doesn't mean ignore science. Just that you should get your science from those actually qualified to read it and apply it. Not searching PubMed by yourself. Discussing the nuances of hypertrophy training is also fun and something a lot of advanced lifters enjoy even whilst knowing it doesn't matter much. This also doesn't mean that you are overcomplicating things by partaking in said discussions.

Good sources (Will update with suggestions from comments)

Criticisms of the Science-Based Community


The community that is negatively referred to as the "science-based community", in lifting, isn't actually science-based but we'll refer to them as such.

They tend to think that they are or can potentially be one step ahead of everyone else because they have access to PubMed.

A quote from /@mrsamiemiller's blog:

If you are just a guy trying to learn about training on the internet, you are not Brad Schoenfeld. You never will be. It is arrogant to pretend that you - a layman - can be. Even more arrogant is the claim that all it will take for you to stop being a layman is the ability to parrot articles and study abstracts you've memorized. [.]

[.]

Most novices that claim to be science-based, actually aren't. They search pubmed for a stone tablet that will get them optimal gains. Typically, once a good marketer comes along and misuses science to claim that they have the 100% optimal routine, they jump ship from their current routine and buy-in.

True scientific thinking necessitates, at minimum, the acknowledgment that uncertainty actually exists, and at best the development of comfort with it. This sense of comfort with the uncertain appears to go against our seemingly inherent inclinations toward its inverse. This is likely one of the main reasons as to why thinking like a scientist is such a difficult thing for us as individuals to actually do. It’s worth noting that scientific thinking can be applied to any field or aspect in life. And can be a huge advantage in our lives once cultivated.

Science is not about your views; science is about how you come to your views. In other words, how you think is far more important than what you think. With scientific thinking, you are essentially humbly acknowledging that you are unable to know everything there is to know whilst still striving to make the best decisions possible using available evidence.

As a novice without any education or history of training others, you lack the ability to accurately "make the best decisions possible using available evidence".

You shouldn't base your knowledge or your own training on self-read research. You lack the ability to think pragmatically and lack the education, expertise and training experience to combine research and training together, also known as Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) or in this case, Evidence-Based Training EBT.

Training like the subjects in a study you just read has obvious flaws. When a study is conducted, researchers have to create a program that is not too time intensive for the researchers and the participants, and they have to cater to the lowest capability level of the participant cohort (within the specific population) to ensure completion. The necessity of these concessions results in pretty unrealistic training programs compared to the real world. [.]

If you've been consistently training for a few years while logging and manipulating training variables over time to further your progress then a shiny new routine based on a single instance of not yet replicated research that's results are based on reported averages of many individuals might (very likely will) be worse than what you are currently doing.

This is why consistency within the flexible guidelines we have will yield better results over time, rather than constantly jumping ship on training programs in search for a theoretical "Optimal" without learning anything.
  • As you train, you should be accumulating data over time so that you can see what variable is causing what. You change one variable at a time whilst keeping the other variables the same. Prioritize consistency and adherence that way you can consistently see trends in programming as in, when you modify X variable, Y happens.

How science gets misused in the fitness industry


[.]

Jumping from new study to applied practice is also just a bad idea in general. The fitness industry is also no stranger to credentialled BS peddlers that do this as well.

This section highlights some more common flaws that the novice "Science-Based" PubMed-ninja unknowingly has, why education and experience in EBP/EBT matters and how science can be misused to take advantage of beginners/novices that are in search of optimal.

Growing muscle is something that we all care about as bodybuilders. However, the actual measurement of say, muscle thickness, muscle cross-sectional area change or lean body mass change in a research setting is not the same as measuring the mechanism by which we grow muscle.

For example, the mechanism of adding protein, (muscle protein synthesis), is not the same as the actual measurement of muscle thickness by, say, ultrasound. Often times we will see researchers, practitioners and scientific authors who write about studies, go:

"Look at this! This approach increased muscle protein synthesis the most! Therefore this is what we should do in practice!"

That's essentially jumping from mechanism to practice which carries some significant issues because often in the body the final outcome of what we see is due to many many many mechanisms. Even though there might be a dominant mechanism, it can be affected by so many other things and we're only aware of the mechanisms that we are currently aware of.

In terms of how to stimulate hypertrophy, we don't know everything on a mechanistic basis in terms of what's going on to actually cause muscle growth. [.]

Physiology and the body are extremely complex. So when you make the jump from mechanism to practice, it's a very arrogant thing to do and more often than not you'll end up being wrong or at least partially misinformed so that's something that can be problematic.

Optional read

A good example of this is there's a study by Mitchell et al, that found there was not a correlation between muscle protein synthesis and actual muscle gain over the course of a training study.

Now, this doesn't mean that we totally dismiss muscle protein synthesis we just have to be aware of the limitations. So if you understand the way the mechanism is studied then you can start to understand why you shouldn't bet the whole farm on it.

Muscle protein synthesis typically is a study that lasts hours rather than days, weeks or months which is the length that's really necessary to measure the change in muscle growth, instead, it's a snapshot often done in a fasted setting, after not normal training in a laboratory. It's also really just measuring what the movement, kinetics or how amino acids in the blood are taken to and from the muscle. That's not the same as actually building muscle over time.

Really you're just getting a one-off snapshot over a few hours and we don't know necessarily what muscle protein breakdown looks like or how that plays out over the long term or what compensatory things are going on in the body so it's just basically a big leap of faith to go directly from mechanism to practice.

What is Evidence-Based Training?


This is where you need to learn the difference between science-based and evidence-based. Otherwise, you will be taken advantage of.

"Evidence-based" does not mean to simply go by the research. Research only provides guidelines for applied practice. The true evidence-based practitioner synthesizes what we know from research and uses his personal expertise in the context of the individual to optimize results. [Image]

Source

What is Evidence-Based Practice?Highlighted what I think more should focus on

Evidence-Based Training

Evidence-Based practice in lifting, when done right, is where people with real education, expertise and vast coaching experience, analyze data and combine the best up to date research with their own coaching experience to bring you guidelines and recommendations that can be tailored to the individual so that they can train in a way that is best for them.

The guidelines we have available are ones most agree on. They are very flexible and you can easily manipulate the variables to create a good program that is tailored to the individual.

Real, practical, Evidence-Based Training practices and recommendations that you can get from good coaches/researchers like Helms, Menno, Israetel, etc by example, is in my opinion, the best way to go about it.

Here's in-depth about how to go about getting evidence-based recommendations as someone that doesn't want to read literature or have the expertise required to do so.

Criticism of the Evidence-Based Community


Training Guidelines/Recommendations (
 
@great_depression You know what's complicated? Finding topics to write about. Lifting magazines exist since 1899, good luck filling them with relevant/accurate info. Then you are some youtuber and need to find topics to stay keep the numbers up. Some study gets published - suddenly every single one of them makes a video about it, podcast about it arise... I tell ya in 5 months we get to hear about time under tension from everyone again.

Building muscle isn't complicated but bodybuilding is a competitive sport, you need to lift optimally and if some way to structure your training is 5% better than everything else then you should do that. Building muscle is a slow process, if you don't lift optimally it's even slower, why waste time. If your genes are bad you have to work optimally to even get acceptable results, or else you stop lifting. I think there is much more than just those general guidelines. In the future we will see more iso work, more machines, more partial reps, more drop sets, more periodisation, more focus on muscles you didn't know existed/you should train.
 
@trumpeter2
Building muscle isn't complicated but bodybuilding is a competitive sport, you need to lift optimally and if some way to structure your training is 5% better than everything else then you should do that.

Absolutely. This post is more towards the common people that I see in lifting communities and have seen growing here recently. It's kind of like bacteria where it's a problem that just grows and gets worse if you don't address it. I feel like in this context, the people reading this will know if this post applies to them.

I think there is much more than just those general guidelines. In the future we will see more iso work, more machines, more partial reps, more drop sets, more periodisation, more focus on muscles you didn't know existed/you should train.

There are, depending on how advanced you are. I could honestly write more in-depth on that but I think at a certain point people would just open the thread and immediately close it lol. The link in the last sentence and this article linked near the beginning goes into great depth about this for those that are interested enough to read beyond this thread.

Edit: Added the second link.
 
@great_depression
This post is more towards the common people that I see in lifting communities and have seen growing here recently.

Yes. I think it's important that people understand that dudes on the internet overwhelmingly uses "bodybuilding" to mean "getting jacked" in the same way they use "powerlifting" to mean "getting strong" and is rarely in either case actually talking about competing in the sport. Like, r/bodybuilding's 2019 survey showed overwhelmingly that the barest possible minimum of their users intend to compete, and even fewer actually compete. I'd put money on the table that if you ran a similar survey here you'd get similar results. Bodybuilding being a competitive sport isn't very relevant when you're talking to people who are never going to compete, which just about everyone on Reddit.
 
@dawn16
dudes on the internet overwhelmingly uses "bodybuilding" to mean "getting jacked"

Yeah I will never understand those dudes. Like why invest time and resources into lifting if you could have much better results by spending some resources into learning how to lift efficiently.
 
@quietbeauty Those dudes lift like idiots, but they are ego invested in their method - then complain that everyone that doesn't train as stupid as them is overcomplicating it. They don't want to train optimally, and they don't want you to do that either because that hurts their feelings.
 
@trumpeter2
more machines

There's a chest press machine that simulates the widening and shortening of the grip width during a full ROM dumbbell press, while also adjusting the strength curve at full contraction and following the upward path of a proper bar trajectory, and a lat pull-down machine that doesn't work with cables and does the same thing. I swear I wouldn't touch any other piece of equipment again if I had access to them full time.
 
@mcolley10 I think I get what you're referring to and I would say it happens mostly in the science-based community because it's easier to do there. Lots of Youtubers/fitness guru's who actually aren't qualified, taking brand new, weak research and jumping straight to applied practice by selling programs based off of it. Then a few weeks or months later, someone with actual credentials makes 10+ articles/podcasts debunking it.

A lot of them masquerade as being science-based or even evidence-based but are really just trying to sell their bs.
 
@great_depression It's actually shocking to me how infrequently I see links to meta-analyses in replies. It's always an individual study with two n=8 groups of menopausal women being generalized to mid-20's adult men.

Also, I've seen maybe 2 posts ever that talk about the actual statistical methods outside of sample size
 
@great_depression I would also include the fact that context is everything in a scientific study and reinforces your point about intellectual humility. X is correlated to Y roughly this often when placed under THESE SPECIFIC CONDITIONS. Change a variable, change the study.
 
@great_depression First of all, what an awesome post. This is a very good way to summarize many flaws when it comes to hypertrophy training and even training in general. I think you hit the nail right on the head when talking about the science-based fact checkers and the simpler bro lifters and realistically nothing is ever as black and white (like you said). It really is a happy medium of critical thinking, science, and personal/professional experience. I hope a many lifters (especially beginners) read this post cause it really shows the principle issues with each mindset among all communities and most importantly promotes good practice.
 
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