Comment by formichunter

To be charitable to both the article and the OP - his advice of “hard work over time” is still good advice.

I think many people tend to get stuck in premature optimization, which can take the fun away and thus you end up quitting. I did that a few times, so it might be a me-thing.

Nowadays I exercise 4x/week without really worrying about a strategy or about optimal protein intake etc.

But then again, nowadays my goal is just to live healthy rather than gain strength.

Still, a "given all else, this optimal thing giving +1% growth" is negligible percentage, when all the other mentioned factors are several orders of magnitude more important.

My point is, simply doing it consistently, even if slightly less optimally, will trivially surpass anything else in the long run and there are no "silver bullets" in training.

The only importance is safety, avoiding injuring oneself.

Also, the article also states this: "RET-induced hypertrophy is mediated to a far greater degree by inherent endogenous biological factors"

> The muscle "shock" broscience has been disproven many times:

Variety isn't to shock or confuse the body, it's just to make sure you actually hit all the muscles in as many ways possible. Take your average push/pull gym rat to a yoga class or a climbing wall and they'll be more sore the next day than they've ever been before, because they'll activate muscles they didn't even know they had.

Indeed. It is really just tension x time under tension within a sensible rep range (probably around 5 - 30 reps or so). Menno on Youtube has a bunch of videos on this, the link below being the latest one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmOBmTZARq8

Basically work the muscle harder and get more jacked. It isn't that hard. Full body workouts are also great for this reason: you can hit a muscle more times per week and be fresher when you hit that muscle, so both the tension and time under tension can be higher vs a body part split.

The reason for varying your workout I have heard is to avoid injury, not to be stronger. Of course it may turn out that is false too.

It doesn’t really affect hypertrophy but it matters because imbalances will get you weird injuries and/or mobility restrictions in the long term.

+1. Point number 5 is probably the worst part of their post.

Beginners should focus on form, consistency, and linear progression of weight. If you can stand the boredom do the exact same program for a year. Probably 2-3 full body workouts that hit each body part twice.

For intermediate+, hitting a body part once a week is suboptimal for most. People who care about results and progression/growth should be progressing from 5 up to 20 hard sets per muscle per week across the span of a few years. (Compounds hit multiple, so it's not necessarily 20 hard times the number of muscles!) What's "hard"? in the 0-2 RIR range, ideally some to failure. Most people do not know what 0RIR is until they actually go to failure on a weight, compute their 1RM and start to use the computed reps/weight load. For many people "0 RIR" is actually 3+ RIR because they stop themselves short. This is why I mostly only trust studies that take people to true failure (either an inability to move the weight any more, or a coach saying the person significantly broke form and must stop)

For advanced, as i understand it, they need to focus on weekly periodization like hitting 3RIR, 2RIR, 1RIR, 0RIR (test new 1RM), Recovery week kind of cycles. Plus more that advanced coaches can teach.

It's actually not, because nothing provides as much satiety as protein.

Every calorie you get from protein reduces your cravings for food significantly more then the equivalent carb and fats.

You still need to get over the initial insulin normalization though from reducing sugars. Nothing reduces that pain, no matter what you try.

Practically speaking it doesn't matter. Just use your healthy (men 15-20% fat; women +8%) weight and calculate based on that.

If you are healthy fat percentage, just use your own weight. If you are a bit highter, and can financially and practically afford it, just use your weight as well. Won't hurt and might actually help a bit.

So it is only a concern for severely obese people. If you are 50+kg overweight, you can scale it down a bit.

Similarly, these obese people shouldn't use the "my current diet - 500kcal a day reduction" which is sensible for already lean bodybuilders. They should just use the "my maintenance diet if I were of healthy weight".

https://mennohenselmans.com/the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-protein...

Yep it’s the most broscience myth that simply won’t go away.

Yes! The "lean mass" caveat is oft ignored by bro scientists, and even LLMs have incorporated the error due to training on bro science forums.

I use this as a bit of a canary. If you see somebody making this basic mistake (like the post you're replying to did), you should be highly skeptical of their other claims too.

I think the poster means that around this time of year these types of articles appear

It really is just mostly this, and social media has tricked people into thinking otherwise.

I was looking at some photos of myself about 10 years ago. At the time, I had been hitting the gym hard, consistently, and intelligently. I had a huge bench press, squad, and deadlift, and was lifting 4-5 days a week, and managed every facet of my diet.

Now, I'm older, have kids, don't sleep as much, and definitely don't make it to the gym as much. I might lift twice a week - and don't try very hard or do progressive overload at all - and try to get in 3-4 days of cardio.

And I honestly don't look very different. Muscles are roughly the same size. In clothes, most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

spectralista says >",,it is: 1. Genetics."<

I learned this young. Our smallish high school had several exceptional athletes who achieved all-state level in their freshman years. They were great but they had to work for it. In basketball we had the usual mix. But one day Dan showed up:

Dan was short but extremely muscular. He was "recruited" by our all-state level fullback who lived in the same neighborhood (circa 1960's). Dan worked at his dad's gas station and didn't want him playing basketball b/c that was one less worker. but Dan loved basketball and played every chance he got, even though his dad would beat the crap out of him regularly for being away from "work". Coach didn't have to be asked again once he saw Dan play - he was a fricking Bob Cousy on the court. Nobody could lay a hand on him - a truly phenomenal player. Coach talked to Dan's dad, worked out a deal and got permission to try a few games.

Our first game with Dan was incredible: like being a soldier alongside Achilles as he slaughtered Trojans! "Pass the ball to Dansy" and the magic happened!

Dan showed up for two games (Dan won them both) but his dad wouldn't allow more.

So Dan was inherently muscular and strong and very coordinated, far more so than any person I'd ever met, with astonishing reflexes, and also a hell of a basketball player. I asked him if he lifted weights and he said he never did.

I concluded that people are different, sometimes very different. Other than that, maybe regular hellacious beatings can make you an incredible athlete.

Can sort of confirm. I wouldn't say so much "genetics" as "constitution". That is, you're born with a set of attributes, and those can also be affected by circumstances outside of your control. Those come together to determine how you respond to exercise and whether you can exercise consistently at all. Someone with active and athletic parents who was affected by undiagnosed childhood diseases and poorly managed injuries (*cough*) is going to have health and performance problems that keep them out of the gym. Someone who builds muscle very slowly but who can just keep at it for 10, 15 years is going to be jacked.

We also don't account for the role of money in these things. Do you make enough to buy good food, afford a decent gym that you can visit regularly, afford a good doctor who can help you manage issues (such as, ahem, low testosterone)?, afford a low-uncontrolled-stress lifestyle? You're good. It's a lot harder when you get hit by roadblocks and don't have the money to resolve them before you've detrained.

> My experience from lifting now for 30+ years and seeing thousands of people lift is it is: 1. Genetics.

Also in first place: steroids.

The bodybuilding magazines loved to talk about genetics because they didn't want to say the quiet part out loud. Nowadays people are more willing to talk about it.

What? I mean.. seriously, what? There are people with great genetic potential that lives like couch potatoes. What good is having the potential of you don't use it. Genetics is important, but there are many elements and just dropping this here is, IMO, irresponsible, because some people will read this and go... Ah, I'm out of shape because of genetics, nothing I can do, oh well.

Total nonsense. You've taken a very specialized observation and presented it as general truth. Can't do that.

Yes, once you get to the level of being able to compete with others, genetic factors will determine who will do better. This is true in any sport.

But that has no bearing on your average person deciding to go to the gym or not. Just about everyone will experience massive benefits from going to the gym regularly. Most don't have the capacity to compete, but that's not what 99% of people care about.

So the #1 factor is not, in fact, genetics, but doing the thing consistently.

As such, this is irresponsible nonsense to be spreading around.

hormones can be tweaked despite genetics

Muscle soreness is not necessary for hypertrophy, but often enough (but not always) it is a good measure of the effort/volume/weight/technique (so a proxy for the mechanical tension, the thing that we want, but it hard to measure directly).