Muscular Hypertrophy | Andy Baker

[Cole Gorton]

Great article. Copied and saved on Google drive.

If I'm being honest, this article kind of hit a nerve for me, bc when I look at my training log, I am squatting the same 5x5 today as I was 4 years ago. I have rationalized that the cumulative stress, experience with variants and different programming structures have made me stronger but the fact is I need to be focused on PRs and increasing the load. That is hard, and so I have been avoiding it.

Thanks Andy

[zft]

Hey Andy,

Thanks for writing the article. Immediately after reading the article, I went and re-read The KSC Method for Power Building which, (as you surely know!) features high-rep, low rest programming and even recommends "chasing 'the pump'". In the article, you mention that there is no evidence that the accumulation of metabolic waste leads to muscle growth. But there could be other mechanisms at play here, right? For example, perhaps it's not the accummulation of waste, but the depletion of glycogen that is the responsible stressor which leads to growth. I don't know, but my only thought was that the lack of clear evidence in regards waste accumulation doesn't say anything about other possible mechanisms, unless these have been ruled out for other reasons I'm unaware of.

The simple stress/recovery/adaptation model laid out in PP:ST---especially in regards to the fact that adaptations are specific to the stressors that they're a response to---is very compelling to me. It makes it easy to understand why higher rep, lower rest work would lead to primarily metabolic adaptations and why lower rep, high intensity work leads to myofibrillar adaptations. Perhaps the model is too simple or otherwise doesn't reflect reality precisely, but I've found that thinking of training in terms of stress/adaptations/recovery to be a powerful, informative and very useful abstraction/model.

In the context of the model, the interplay of strength work and higher-rep bodybuilding-style work that you talk about in the Power Building book (and, less directly, in this article) makes a lot of sense to me: getting stronger (aside from the myofibrillar hypertrophy aspects) enables you to use heavier loads for your higher rep, bodybuilding-style work which correspondingly have greater metabolic demands and thereby continue to drive metabolic hypertrophy adaptations.

What's I'm interested in is what's your take on what's going on in regards to the short rest, 8-12 rep isolation stuff that's heavily featured in the Power Building book. What are the stressors here and what are the adaptations? Is my mental model wrong or too simplistic? This kind of stuff is definitely effective, but why? What's going on and how can we understand it in terms of this article?

[Yngvi]

The trolls ask argumentative questions with the goal of settling some perceived personal offense or ideological objective.
Zft has always been genuinely asking questions, as far as I can tell.

If I am training somebody who is interested in bodybuilding, I first tell them they should not worry about any specialization into bodybuilding until they are a late intermediate or advanced lifter (at this point, there will be periodization of some sort and assistance/isolations exercises at higher rep ranges)

If a bodybuilder or physique competitor who is an intermediate-advanced lifter wants me to train them, I tell them I do not care about bodybuilding and the specifics (including drug protocols) are outside of my knowledge. I am not the person to do this.

If they want to know from a purely academic standpoint, I tell them this is not understood well-enough on a microbiological level to do more than speculate. How do you quantify or measure any of this when there are so many codependent variables and no clear causative relationships?
If you want to speculate, I would make a few more guesses in addition to what Andy said, but I haven't done the necessary research to come to a firm conclusion on those guesses.

[Steven Kalin]

The trolls ask argumentative questions with the goal of settling some perceived personal offense or ideological objective.
Zft has always been genuinely asking questions, as far as I can tell.

If I am training somebody who is interested in bodybuilding, I first tell them they should not worry about any specialization into bodybuilding until they are a late intermediate or advanced lifter (at this point, there will be periodization of some sort and assistance/isolations exercises at higher rep ranges)

If a bodybuilder or physique competitor who is an intermediate-advanced lifter wants me to train them, I tell them I do not care about bodybuilding and the specifics (including drug protocols) are outside of my knowledge. I am not the person to do this.

If they want to know from a purely academic standpoint, I tell them this is not understood well-enough on a microbiological level to do more than speculate. How do you quantify or measure any of this when there are so many codependent variables and no clear causative relationships?
If you want to speculate, I would make a few more guesses in addition to what Andy said, but I haven't done the necessary research to come to a firm conclusion on those guesses.

I don’t actually think Zft is a troll. He’s an obviously strong dude, who’s socially awkward, kinda like me. However, in my 50+ years on the planet, I’ve learned to shut my mouth and listen to people who know more than I do. I wonder how strong he’d be if he learned that? Probably be huge too.

[zft]

I’ve learned to shut my mouth and listen to people who know more than I do.

This kind of deference is really something I find problematic: irreverence and willingness to disagree--even with people more "senior"--is important.

[Yngvi]

There is this odd sociological phenomenon where people like zft read reddit or some other dirty rag, hear criticisms of Rip or SS, then try to go out of their way to ask stupid questions in an attempt to prove to the woke reddit crowd they are independent.

Really bizarre the way this works, but I still would guess he is not a troll.

[Mark Rippetoe]

This kind of deference is really something I find problematic: irreverence and willingness to disagree--even with people more "senior"--is important.

How about if they're more intelligent, experienced, and informed than you, and you don't know enough about it to ask a useful question? In this case, I think Yngvi is correct.

[zft]

you don't know enough about it to ask a useful question?

Useful to whom? As Paul Halmos said about learning math, "Don't just read it; fight it!". Actually understanding something may require being very active, perhaps this involves asking "useless" questions; but to me, there's clear utility in such questions. It is unfortunate that the pursuit of trying to get answers to these sorts of questions results in such hostility on this forum; wouldn't you agree that this fosters a culture where people just accept and instead of actually understand?

[Steven Kalin]

This kind of deference is really something I find problematic: irreverence and willingness to disagree--even with people more "senior"--is important.

I didn’t say “senior”. I said more knowledgeable. Your reading comprehension sucks, bro.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Useful to whom? As Paul Halmos said about learning math, "Don't just read it; fight it!". Actually understanding something may require being very active, perhaps this involves asking "useless" questions; but to me, there's clear utility in such questions. It is unfortunate that the pursuit of trying to get answers to these sorts of questions results in such hostility on this forum; wouldn't you agree that this fosters a culture where people just accept and instead of actually understand?

You stupid asshole. This forum is one of the best places on the internet to freely exchange ideas about many many things. What useful thing have you contributed to a discussion -- actually made the discussion better or taught us something -- with your "rugged individualism"? You seem content to substitute disagreement for analysis, and that is cheaply-bought exceptionalism.