If You Could Design a Study...

Bigger Stronger Leaner Competitive Bodybuilding
1 
 I'm starting to dredge up some ideas for my master's thesis. My adviser has ideas, I'm working to come up with one of my own, and in the worst case scenario, I could "piggy-back" off of a Doctoral thesis.

Unfortunately, I keep thinking up studies that are “training-studies” - in other words, longer-term studies that our lab doesn’t have time or manpower for. We do have all the equipment we could want, and we certainly have people. We just have a ton of other intensive training studies going on.

I’m certainly going to follow my interests and put effort into this myself, but our adviser wants us thinking of as many ideas as possible. Then I thought - where better than T-Nation to stimulate some ideas I haven’t thought of myself? At the very least, it might stimulate an interesting discussion!

So - if you could study one thing in strength and conditioning, what would it be?

2

What kind of training study are you equipped for? Are we talking about observational type stuff or cellular level micro analysis or what?

3

It would be cool to see a study of what percent of lifters squat weekly, what percent squat to paralel, and average lean body mass of each group.

Average amount of weight a person gains per year while trying to get bigger.

Average amount of strength gained while trying to get stronger over the period of a year.

Average military press, close grip bench, and flat bench ratio.

And what % of people believe in the average weight lifting myths. Like spot reducing, muscle turns to fat, you can be big but not strong, squats are bad for your knees etc etc.

And if the people do squat, what is the average depth of their squats.

4

study the effects of training only one side of your body

5

Honestly, if you could get a decent sample size and control for food intake (I imagine that would very hard,but it might not be necessary) I would love to see how frequency stacked up against “body building” training.

One group trains the whole body 3x a week using rotating reps and exercises, the other trains using a body part split training each muscle once per week. At the end of 16 weeks see which group has gained more mass. Put it to rest in a study. You might even consult someone like Chad Waterbury and Christian Thibaudeau for the programs and ask how they would like the study to be carried out to minimize external forces.

6

Maybe the how pre, peri or postworkout nutrition affects gains/recovery

7

Depending on your resources for the actual specifics…

but the test subjects would be hard training athletes or bodybuilders training for size gains and not sedentary college kids doing leg extensions.

8

How about the therapeutic effects of testosterone on the brain? It would actually help if we knew what you were mastering in.

9

I would repeat this study:

http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/82/3/765

Only this time, use all the things we normally use to maintain lean mass when cutting: heavy lifting, BCAA’s , pre/post workout nutrition, and high protein intake. Let the control group do none of those things, just the T3, as a mirror to the referenced study. This way, the control group should react in a predictable manner.

I’d wager you would see a far more favorable response in body composition. This study would build more of a foundation for intelligent weight loss therapy. We have far too much reliance on drugs alone, let a study show that heavy lifting and eating right make a difference too. My dream is that doctors will eventually write prescriptions for gym memberships and grocery lists, instead of just selling another vial of insulin.

-Sab

10

The trouble with the whole idea of studies telling us anything personally useful as it relates to training as I see it is that any study done with a large enough sample, diverse enough parameters and controls, for a long enough period of time would be so prohibitively expensive that it will never be done.

Age, sex, numerous (like dozens) samples of each, controlled (and not just on their word) for training methods and intensity, nutrition, stress, sleep, environmental contaminants, etc. would all have to infallibly observed before I would find myself taking much from it into the gym. People are too different, all of the above mentioned can be also totally different even within the individual depending on a myriad of factors, many subjective and so on to make training related studies much more than paper bound academic discussion as far as I’m concerned.

11

Variable: Training bilateral movements only versus training unilateral movements only

Pre- and post-measures:

  • Strength on primary lifts (squat, DL, Presses)
  • Athletic movements (broad jumps, vertical jumps with one leg and with two legs, 40 yard sprints, etc.)

→ gains?
→ pros and cons of each condition per sort of measure
→ carry-over effects

12

Hey guys,

Thanks for the ideas so far. Some of these I absolutely love - but unfortunately, I can’t do all of them. I can see a couple places where it would be useful for me to clarify.

For the study, I have to do something related to the physiology, endocrine aspects, or other factors related to strength and conditioning. As I am not in an Exercise Psychology program or anything like that, I cannot do anything that only requires a survey or people. I have to actually do things that require taking blood or doing muscle biopsies or ultrasounds or VO2 Max, etc. One of the issues with me trying to figure out a good topic is that I am taking classes that would inform me of those factors this semester.

One of the issues, though, is I cannot do a training study as a Master’s thesis. I probably should clarify what that means because I mentioned it before. For a Master’s student, we don’t have the resources to have people come in again and again - either to train them or otherwise. We have two such studies we’re working on now, and the manpower we need for those is very intensive.

At most, a Master’s thesis candidate would be able to do a study of acute effects, such as participants coming in, doing squats, and analyzing that blood (an example of a study we are currently working on). I could also study something about muscle fibers from muscle fiber samples, etc.

However, as you can imagine, a training study requires a whole crew of people - as does an acute session. Usually we only do those when a company sponsors such a study. Even an acute session requires people for blood draws, some for blood processing, some for spotting, perhaps also a doctors and others for muscle biopsy, etc. A training study requires all of that on an ongoing basis plus trainers volunteering their time.

Some comments on your suggestions -
I would also love to see those studies done. The pre/post nutrition studies have been done before. And studies on training bilateral movements only versus training unilateral movements only are being done. Tiribulus - your concerns are valid, which is why scientists always have to match controls on many factors and exclude people from studies. Published studies also have to go through an IRB approval process and have a statistically significant “n” value to be published - at least in any reputable journal. Otherwise you’re right, they would be a waste of time. Also - we definitely don’t do leg extensions in this lab!

Things we could do:

  • Average military press, close grip bench, and flat bench ratio. Not a hard study, bring people in, test them, have them leave, not too much man power.
  • I could do the acute hormonal and physiological effects of the “bodybuilding” versus whole body study - but I would not be able to make it a training study, and I think the untrained study has been done.

Thank you guys for your ideas so far!