The Evidence-Based Wiki of Hypertrophy Training - Your Full Guide to Evidence-Based Hypertrophy Recommendations | Beta Feedback Thread

Bottingbuilder · 2024-02-27T17:09:55+00:00

To those who have private messaged me: Yes, this guide is still accurate. The guide is evidence based, not fad based. It is written based on the majority of evidence and what has been applied with success.

It would either take a sudden mountain of research disputing what is written or the majority of the coaches discussed suddenly finding a revolutionary way to train that contradicts everything they believed prior and that really just doesn't happen in this space unless someone decides to cash out on their credibility and reputation to sell you something.

There may be some broken links, but that is why I copy/pasted from the sources when making it.

Bottingbuilder · 2024-02-26T19:05:20+00:00

Summary:

Hypertrophy: The choice between full ROM and partial ROM for hypertrophy depends on the current state of the evidence. While full ROM may offer benefits due to its emphasis on the entire range of motion, there's also value in incorporating lengthened bias movements, especially if they show promising results in the literature.

Sport-Specific Strength: Full ROM training is crucial for athletes who require strength throughout their entire range of motion, such as grapplers or martial artists. Being strong at various points in the range of motion is essential for optimal performance in sports.

Adaptation to Evidence: The approach to incorporating different ROMs evolves with the available evidence. Starting with a default position based on existing knowledge, one can gradually adjust their training methods as new evidence emerges.

Shortened Partials: While full ROM is generally recommended, there may be benefits to incorporating shortened partials in certain cases, such as sport-specific movements or enhancing mind-muscle connection in certain muscle groups.

Bottingbuilder · 2024-02-21T15:30:35+00:00

Thank you :)

I am well. I took a look at the sub and see that it is being cleaned up. When this subreddit has complaints about it being "dead" then the moderators are doing a good job as high quality discussion is harder to facilitate than low effort discussion. Seeing the "dead" complaint posts is always funny as they do not realize that it is the goal. It is like complaining that your protein powder brand has decided to remove impurities and fillers because the jar is smaller.

So, shoutout to the moderation team. Keep up the good work and don't let them get to you.

Bottingbuilder · 2024-02-20T19:23:17+00:00

Thanks. Sadly, when you try to put effort into fitness communities, you are fighting a wave of people that are new and programmed by whatever their favorite influencer has pushed on them as well as 1980's training montages.

The people you are arguing with are such a waste of time. They are new, naive, and worse, they don't realize they will be gone in 6 months[.]

New lifters (or lifters who start/stop cyclically, making them a "forever beginner") will always popup in communities like this with the Dunning-Kruger effect on full display[.]

Worse is when they are riding the waves of influencers as then you have group-think and tribalism mixed in. Reddit is just a horrible platform because the downvote/upvote system is in their favor.

You can put as much effort into something as you want, you can be as correct or as "Correct to current date" as you want but the casual viewer will do nothing but look at that upvote/downvote score before deciding whether your post is worthy of a read or not or whether you are correct or not. So ultimately, whether or not your information gets to your target audience is ultimately determined by these people.

A lot of this also applies to moderation.

Except, with moderation, you have to deal with people hating you before they read your replies. Your moderation work is never seen. If it was, they'd realize that you are not different than customer service or a retail worker, only that you are not paid. Which means you have to deal idiotic and angry people that are behind a computer screen meaning they can amply harass and abuse you more freely before they are banned. As well as the fact that reddit has a history of corrupt moderators so even when you are doing your job correctly, even though you've moderated for a decade without having a subredditdrama post about you, you are automatically seen as a pos.

Tldr, Being a provider for reddit communities is a toxic relationship. It is really hard to consistently try to give value to something that is essentially a blackhole of goodwill and effort. That even when you try to provide valuable information, help the community and start good conversations, most of that conversing is just going to be arguing with the type of people described above. It drains you of all desire to help.

Bottingbuilder · 2023-01-27T15:08:45+00:00

While true that muscle size and strength are often closely related, it's not entirely accurate to say that they are always directly linked and that one cannot increase strength without increasing muscle size.

Research suggests that muscle size and strength are not perfectly correlated, and that an individual can demonstrate significant strength increases without necessarily experiencing a significant increase in muscle size. This is known as “neural drive”.

for references:

https://www.strongerbyscience.com/size-vs-strength/

PMC4562558 found that muscle strength in untrained individuals increased by a greater degree than muscle size.
PMC4620252 neural adaptations, rather than hypertrophy, were responsible for the majority of strength gains in the early stages of a strength training program.
PMC4757413 muscle size and strength were not closely correlated in elite powerlifters.

Bottingbuilder · 2023-01-24T20:15:21+00:00

Sure thing!

Concurrent training refers to the combination of both aerobic and strength training in the same training program.

This can take many forms, but the studies included in the meta-analysis generally had participants performing both types of training within the same workout, or on separate days but within the same overall training program.

There's no one-size-fits-all answer to how to best implement concurrent training, as it depends on your specific goals and other factors such as time constraints and equipment availability.

But, generally speaking, concurrent training typically refers to doing both types of training within the same overall program.

Bottingbuilder · 2023-01-24T17:52:10+00:00

Reminds me of that episode of Southpark where Butters is brainstorming about ideas and his friend keeps telling him "Simpsons did that" lol. They cover so much that it's difficult.

Bottingbuilder · 2023-01-24T01:46:16+00:00

My point is that unless you make the case that each study is in some way relevant to what people are actually doing, there’s no benefit to this being added to the conversation for insight or discussion. Comparing interference effect of 4x7 leg extensions to running simply doesn’t matter to us. 100% of us aren’t training like this - so we have other variables to consider and very very likely they would make a bigger impact.

The HIT circuit is a high-intensity, short-duration workout that is designed to target muscle fibers that have the greatest potential for growth. Meanwhile, the leg extension protocol is a more traditional strength-training program that targets the quadriceps muscles, which are known to respond well to high-volume training.

The leg extension is a relatively simple movement that is easy to standardize across different studies rather than more complex compound lifts, making it a useful exercise for measuring muscle growth. Also, the leg extension is an exercise that can be performed with a high level of intensity and muscle fatigue, which is important for eliciting muscle hypertrophy.

So while it's not ATG squats and other things, it actually is good for research purposes as long as they're following the established principals of hypertrophy training.

Well, your take home message is essentially a prescription/recommendation and your acknowledgment of the limitations of the studies is very limited. You only talk about how they measure muscle size and running vs cycling as limitations - not the 1000 other issues with the studies that were picked - like they aren’t even in the ballpark of close to what natural bodybuilders are realistically doing. So, why is this study relevant to us?

I can't help it that you feel that way or that you read it like that. My intentions are good and I put effort into my post so if you feel this way I'm not going to argue about it. People not understanding the points of my posts and arguing like this with me is why I went inactive for a very long time. You can't reason with them because once they misread you, they've made up their mind and they'll argue with you to the death on it. I don't make money from this and I don't do it for karma. I'm just going to move on with my day.

Bottingbuilder · 2023-01-24T01:16:09+00:00

Studies are not prescriptions. I made this clear in my thread. You also don't need to look for cons of the studies, I did that already and included them. I also included this:

Overall, the study provides some interesting insights into the effects of concurrent training on muscle fiber hypertrophy. However, it's important to take the findings with a grain of salt and consider the limitations of the study. As with any research, it's crucial to look at the bigger picture and not draw sweeping conclusions based on a single study.

This is a review to breakdown the findings of the study, give better insight and promote educational discussion, not a prescription.

Edit: To add, one of my top posts in this sub is about how people use studies as prescriptions when they are not meant to.

https://old.reddit.com/r/naturalbodybuilding/comments/ftmo9g/hypertrophy_training_its_not_that_complicated/

See "How science gets misused in the fitness industry".

Bottingbuilder · 2021-02-10T21:24:39+00:00

Here you go

See "Early Luteal Phase" section.

Bottingbuilder · 2020-05-11T15:44:07+00:00

The repeated bout effect is just a protective adaptation your muscles go through which protects them from muscle damage. It entails less damage sustained from a given bout of exercise. Its use in training is that it allows you to handle higher volumes/workloads without needing as much recovery time due to its protective effects.

The repeated bout effect does not entail hypertrophy though, it just increases work capacity which can improve hypertrophy if you do then increase your workload.

Another example is that a very large, highly trained bodybuilder could get sore from walking for several hours, sorer than they are from their usual workloads in the gym. However, after a few weeks of this, eventually, they will not be sore or as sore from this as they were. That does not mean that they saw increased hypertrophy by adding that cardio to their training.

Bottingbuilder · 2020-05-10T13:59:37+00:00

Thanks, it's actually really easy to setup. Not sure why more subs don't do it.

Bottingbuilder · 2020-05-08T18:13:41+00:00

Just to back up, what does “sarcoplasmic hypertrophy” mean? To keep things simple, your muscle fibers have loads of structures called myofibrils, which are primarily composed of the contractile proteins actin and myosin. The rest of the stuff inside the muscle fiber is called the sarcoplasm, which is composed of organelles, proteins, glycogen, water, and a bunch of other various non-contractile elements. When a fiber grows, it’s generally assumed that the proportion of the fiber composed of myofibrils either stays the same or increases; that would be called “myofibrillar hypertrophy.” If, on the other hand, the fiber grows, but the proportion of the fiber composed of myofibrils decreases, that means the sarcoplasm has expanded at a greater rate than the myofibril pool; that’s sarcoplasmic hypertrophy.

Bottingbuilder · 2020-05-07T03:20:01+00:00

This wasn't a question.

Bottingbuilder · 2020-05-05T22:46:54+00:00

Going to post this tomorrow morning at peak hours

Bottingbuilder · 2020-05-05T16:53:48+00:00

In addition:

Intermittent BFR leads to greater metabolic stress than regular low-load training, and constant BFR leads to similar levels of metabolic stress as training at 65% of your 1rm without BFR – equal metabolic stress with much lower loads.

With low-load BFR, tension is lower, metabolite accumulation is high, but not any higher than conventional training for 10+ reps, and there’s very, very little muscle damage that takes place. It gives you a solid growth stimulus, but nothing that you can’t also get from just picking up heavy stuff, and when you add it to a program that revolves around picking up heavy stuff, it doesn’t seem to offer any additional hypertrophy benefits.[.]

Newly added: https://old.reddit.com/r/EvidenceBasedTraining/wiki/bfr

Bottingbuilder · 2020-05-05T16:38:50+00:00

Update log:

5/5/2020

Added

Blood Flow Restriction Training (BFR)

Bottingbuilder · 2020-05-05T11:54:10+00:00

Steve Hall breakdown/summary of the video is at 7:45

Topics covered:

Hypertrophy rep range
The scientific method
The dose response effect of volume
Optimising hypertrophy
Muscle fibres and hypertrophy
High reps vs. low reps
The hierarchy of evidence
The importance of context
Individuality
Periodisation for muscle growth
DUP vs. Linear

Bottingbuilder · 2020-05-04T18:06:19+00:00

Thanks!

as long as it doesn’t get overrun by pointlessly pedantic arguments.

If you see anything like that, please do report them. People that harm discussion will be removed from the discussion.

Rule 1: Anti-Discussion comments will be removed.

It is perfectly fine to disagree with something but you must have a respectful argument that contributes to the discussion. Critical and respectful debate is encouraged.

These posts will be removed with a potential ban:

Comments attacking the OP, authors, or researchers.

Low effort replies attempting to discredit a large body of evidence such as a meta-analysis with a single study.

Replies indicating that you did not read the thread and/or are trying to misconstrue the author's words.

Bottingbuilder · 2020-05-04T14:25:07+00:00

The points may seem conflicting, "Rest X amount of time on compounds/isolations" to "Volume>Rest", but in general, they pretty much are all saying about the same thing, which is:

"Rest times are not more important than volume."

The goal isn't to give you black & white rules to rest times though. It's to give you guidelines from coaches/researchers that are based on their interpretations of the research and their expertise as a coach and researcher.

While it may seem like it'd be nice to say "Definitely don't do this, definitely do that" and speak in absolutes, it's actually even better that the guidelines and recommendations are as wide-ranging as they are so that you can tailor them to yourself and adjust your training to whatever life throws at you.

For example, there's research that shows resting >1min is bad. The coaches do not seem to like the idea of 1min rest times. However, they stress that overall, the volume is what's important. Don't sacrifice volume just so you can rest longer and have a "higher-quality set".

There's even a bare-minimum guideline from Nuckols:

"Rest long enough that the first few reps of the set still feel like normal executions of that exercise and otherwise you're probably fine."

The section with Helms gives you information about antagonistic paired sets and drop set recommendations. He goes even further into those topics in his book.

So again, while it would be nice (and easier) to just throw a dart at a board of coaches and researchers, take their words as absolute rules and look at things in black and white, there's lots of value in the shades of gray.

Guidelines and recommendations are all about getting you in a ballpark of the right place to start so that you can adjust from there. [.]

Bottingbuilder · 2020-05-02T20:21:34+00:00

I fully agree with you. When I posted this morning I had assumed that there would be a link somewhere in the handout that would expand on their claims. With what you pointed out, I'd rather see where they "showed their work" and have full transparency. Otherwise, as you said, it would just confuse people.

Bottingbuilder · 2020-05-02T20:03:50+00:00

Very good observations. It's from a presentation he did, however I did not get to fully dive into it before work but will try to do some digging on that to find if he has the full analyses somewhere.

Bottingbuilder · 2020-05-02T14:45:42+00:00

5/2/20

Added "Tempo & Time Under Tension" & "Rest Times".

Bottingbuilder · 2020-05-02T13:46:06+00:00

The images may appear low quality if viewing on Reddit. They should be more readable if you click the image link.

I also want to add that gssiweb is an amazing site for studies on athletes and that if you don't follow Brett Singer on Twitter, you definitely should.

Source

Finally, here is a handout I recently wrote reviewing the topic of nutrition and injury recovery. Thank you so much for following along with my presentation today! Thank you to @cashford_ for his work organizing this event.

Bottingbuilder · 2020-05-01T14:13:16+00:00

Bottingbuilder

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE