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29/10/2022

Bodybuilding is better than yoga at lengthening your muscles.

Many people think yoga gives you long muscles and bodybuilding gives you short muscles.

Yet most studies find that traditional static stretching protocols do not increase muscle or tendon length.

When you stretch a muscle: neural stretch tolerance increases. Basically, you teach the nervous system that it’s okay to relax the muscle a bit more when stretched. Most of the neural adaptation is simply an increase in pain tolerance.

Stretching primarily trains the nervous system, not your muscles.

But you know what does make your muscles longer?
Heavy weight training.

From your body’s point of view, the stress induced by stretching pales in comparison to the tension put on a muscle by a heavy weight at the end of its range of motion. This stress actually causes the muscle to adapt its structure.

In conclusion, bodybuilding does not give you short muscles. It makes them longer. In contrast, yoga does almost nothing for the length of your muscles.

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21/10/2022

Training a muscle 3x per week doubles muscle growth compared to training it 1x per week, new study on trained lifters finds

I had been waiting so long for this study on training frequency.

The researchers compared the effect of training a muscle 1x vs. 3x per week for strength and muscle growth using a within-subject design. This is much more robust than the typical between-individuals design, as you control for each person's individual genetics, diet and lifestyle.
The trainees performed one-legged leg presses. One leg did 9 sets once a week. The other leg did 3 sets 3x per week.
A second group did the same program but equalized total training volume work (sets x reps x weight) between frequencies.
Since you can normally perform considerably more work with higher training frequencies due to being less fatigued, the 3x per week group had to hold back to perform only the same volume as the 1x per week group.

When equating total training tonnage between groups, there were no meaningful differences between the training frequencies, as expected based on prior research. In contrast, the leg trained 3x per week without holding back achieved 2-2.7x more muscle growth than the legs being trained 1x per week group (4.1% vs. 1.5% & 2.1% increases in quad CSA). In other words, it seems the higher training frequency more than doubled their size gains.
Leg press 1RM strength increased 25% in the 3x leg compared to 16% & 19% in the legs being trained once per week.

However, none of these differences were statistically significant. With only 12 lifters per group, trained individuals and a 9-week study, statistical power was most likely too low to detect any realistic effects as statistically significant. So the authors performed an effect size analysis. This indicated the effect of training frequency was insignificant when equating total work but of medium strength when not equating total work. The confidence intervals of the between-group effect sizes for both strength and size did not cross zero in the comparison not equating total work, indicating it was very likely that the difference was real and of meaningful practical importance. Put simply, the data showed training a muscle 3x per week can in practice considerably improve strength development and muscle growth compared to traditional bro splits that train each muscle only 1x per week.

For more information, check out the section 'The benefits of high frequency training' in this article: https://mennohenselmans.com/high-resistance-training-frequency-enhances-muscle-thickness-resistance-trained-men/

28/07/2022

Eggs have long been regarded as little cholesterol bombs that clog up your arteries and kill you, yet there's now reasonable scientific consensus that dietary cholesterol has minimal impact on most people's blood cholesterol levels.

Many controlled studies have found no adverse effects of egg consumption on cardiovascular disease markers, including cholesterol levels.

Knowing this, we can focus on eggs' nutritional value, which is eggcelent. Eggs are a top-quality source of protein, choline and B-vitamins. (Tip: Get flaxseed fed 'omega-3 eggs' for a better fatty acid profile.)

A new scientific review by Puglisi & Fernandez (2022) in Nutrients summarized the proposed health benefits of eggs in the attached infographic.

There's also emerging albeit mixed evidence that cholesterol can improve muscular development by i.a. improving lipid raft formation and thereby anabolic signaling. 2 Studies have found that egg yolks can increase muscle protein synthesis compared to the same protein provided as egg whites. For more details, Google 'cholesterol forgotten anabolic Menno'.

Eggciting stuff, no?

07/01/2022