Comment by Analemma_
1 day ago
I know it's practically de rigeur to jump into the comments and immediately complain about methodology for any study that makes it to the front page, and I want to emphasize I don't distrust their findings, but I would like to see an equivalent study go out longer than 10 weeks. When I've been taking weightlifting seriously I feel like I don't even start to notice hypertrophy until 8-10 weeks. I feel like 6 months is the actual period where results would matter, to me, but I assume "subject compliance" is pretty difficult to get for such a timeframe, if you're really watching dietary intake and ensuring subjects go to failure (which, to its credit, this study did).
This is par for the course with exercise science. It's mostly fake. No blinding, small sample sizes, researchers with agenda, low duration, low funding etc. The good news is that doing almost anything works.
Doing almost anything works ...
... over doing nothing ...
... initially.
Progress, over time, tends to involve both variation in routine and specific methods, progression, programming, modalities, techniques, form, movements, etc.
One somewhat dubious 10 week study of newbies, as many others have commented, doesn't communicate much.
A further complication is that much of the hypertrophic adaptation is systemic, that is, relates to overall body stimulus and other factors (nutrition, rest, genetics, etc.). Among those effects is the net hormonal response (testosterone, HGH, ILG
Heck, there's a well-known phenomenon called cross education* where an untrained limb will see strength / hypertrophy gains when its opposite is trained:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_education>
(Other / similar terms: Cross-Transfer Effect, Inter-Limb Transfer, Motor Cortex, Activation, Contralateral Training Effect).
Body adaptation to resistance training is weird.
Doing almost anything works better than doing nothing.
How would you blind it? This isn't pharmacy where you can hand out sugar pills.