It has become quite common (although certainly it’s not new) to see coaches and article authors recommend an increased frequency and essentially base their recommendations entirely on the fact that MPS is increased for 24-48 hours then needs to be brought up again.
Obviously not new but it certainly is the hot tip these days.
However, many a natural body builder has built a world class physique with typical low frequency bro splits, and while some of these can be designed to hit things twice a week or so many are the typical once a week frequency. Actually almost every notable natural BBer uses the once a week frequency, with some possible overlap like shoulders or triceps/biceps getting hit twice secondarily… but by and large they all train bro split style.
So my question would be is there something else going on besides MPS that builds muscle. If MPS were the whole story higher frequency trainers would obliterate lower frequency trainers in both rate and total accumulation of muscle but this doesn’t happen… a phenomenon that hasn’t gone unnoticed.
You always seem to be a wealth of info on this kind of stuff, how say you? Why do most of the top natty guys all train with a lower frequency
You dont magically start losing ground in a muscle group after 48 hours, especially if you’re still doing other sessions in the gym for other body parts.
As Brad (brick as well as schoenfeld) pointed out, we don’t fully understand what exactly causes muscle growth. Sure nitrogen balance or breakdown vs growth can say a lot, but there’s a lot more to consider. Doubling your frequency of training will not double your rate of progress.
Even if they were all known, the recent focus on MPS as the main mechanism seems misguided to me. If it truly does peak and then return to baseline in 48-72 hours, at which point you need to stimulate again or else you are waiting around for 3-4 days before hitting it again ( at least thats the “theory” a lot of these articles would suggest), than indeed training 2-3 times a week would yield much, much faster gains.
However thats obviously not the case, not by a long shot.
In Brads article there, say what you will about him, he mentions multiple different methods by which a muscle is made bigger… I suppose it naturally follows (for me) to ask if MPS is triggered in all of them. And perhaps is there something else happening after day 2-3 that is still making the muscle larger that isnt MPS, or maybe it needs MPS to get kick started, but is another process entirely.
Many things can trigger muscle growth, and we might not even know all the pathways that can add muscle.
For example.
Activating mTOR can lead to growth by increasing protein synthesis
Releasing local growth factors (MGF, !GF-1) can also increase muscle growth both by increasing protein synthesis and increasing nutrients uptake by the muscle.
LACTATE can also increase muscle growth by increasing satellite cells (which can provide cellular material to repair and rebuild muscle cells), by increasing follistatin levels and decreasing myostatin
Are most natural bodybuilders still gaining SIGNIFICANT amounts of muscle after years of training? I’m sure that they can for stretches, but how much does the lean body mass of a 10 year veteran really increase over the course of a year on average? If natural bodybuilders have already basically reached their muscle carrying limit, then training on an intensive split might work fine for maintaining total muscle mass and also “shifting around” some of the balance of muscle to the places where it will show a difference.
Just because synthesis of new proteins increases for 24-48 hours after training, that doesn’t necessarily mean muscle net protein goes up in that period does it? There is also catabolism of proteins after training as damaged actomyosin bundles are degraded by leukocytes and the amino acids are recycled. I am pretty sure that the increase in protein synthesis after training is measure by levels of enzymes responsible for protein synthesis in the cell, or by viewing ribosomal activity. This tells us nothing about the rate of protein breakdown, or if anything, since degraded proteins tend to be recycled in new protein synthesis, it might imply greater levels of protein breakdown in that 24-48 hour period after training as well. Point is that raising protein synthesis 1, 2 or 3 times a week doesn’t really matter. It is the net balance of new protein synthesis versus degradation.
In addition to the two points in the 2 prior posts, I think it is clear that the time factor curves of protein syntheses, degradation, lymphatic clearing, neurological restoration, hormonal restoration and muscular-skeletal-tendon-ligament restoration are all on different time frames and depend a lot on the nature of the training, so even if you can produce positive protein synthesis 3x a week, if other factors have not recovered you can end up behind the 8-ball on them. Personally I like to train a muscle between 2-3 times a week with smaller volume per workout, but I think that part of the reason is actually that training has a degree of restorative effect, like double stimulation? or helping to clear out lymphatic fluid. I feel like my muscles get rigid and backed up if I only train them once a week and that they heal faster with more frequency, but that might not matter when it comes to pure natural bodybuilding.
I definitely think there are other, as-of-yet-unmeasured processes going on that lead to hypertrophy. Theres just no way a BBer would progress training 1x a week if that were the case (assuming the MPS window discussed above is even accurate).
Maybe you dont need MPS to build actin and myosin back up, or there is something else triggered by MPS that lasts for 5-7 days that isnt known or measurable yet.
The main reason I switched to higher frequency (even just 2x a week) was because with my kid around the house I absolutely couldnt deal with the days and days of crippling leg soreness and lack of mobility that comes with the leg workouts I was doing.
After 10-15 years of training that way, honestly I got kind of tired of wearing that badge of honor every week. You feel “good” about 2 days a week and then BAM, you destroy your legs again and can barely sit to a toilet without pulling a groin muscle the next half a week.
Literally, natural bodybuilders - other than a temporary pump/intraoworkout carbs & good lighting and FLUCTUATING body fat (water retention) will not really change their initial muscle base. That is the painful reality we must accept. Or take steroids.
So lots of the discussion about muscle hypertrophy actually is almost irrelevant as it is literally grams of muscle tissue being built after one has built a solid foundation. And the “look” is more impacted by posture, body fat, angles etc.
I’ve realized muscle growth is all hormon/physiology. LIke the guy sitting on his ass injecting testosterone and has a good lifestyle will add LBm all across his frame. It’s also why big compounds will put muscle across the body and small “targeted” work pays barely any increments.
In the extreme case if you use a wrench everyday for months then you’ll get some targeted local hypertrophy. But generally the physique is a result of hormonal date (diet, lifestyle, health & drugs…training maybe 20%)??
That’s not untrue, even though it’s not 100% correct.
I do see value in using isolation work. But to me that value is more as a way to make the smaller muscles more responsive to the bigger lifts.
Specifically when you have a lagging muscle group, it is often due to less than stellar recruitment of that muscle. This will result in a low stimulation of that muscle during the big lifts: other, more efficient muscles, will take over.
Isolation work can improve your skill/capacity to recruit the lagging muscle while will make you better at integrating it when you do the big lift.
Most of the time I don’t do any isolation work for delts, quads and triceps because these muscles respond easily for me and they grow just doing the big lifts. A few times a year I will do some isolation work for them, that’s normally when either my CNS is run down and I drop a lot of the big lifts or when I start to lose the feeling of proper mind-muscle connection with these muscles.
To be honest it’s all about training, eating, lifestyle and supplements that makes you a “juicy” natural.
Short of steroids that’s the best we can do. And at low enough body fat, you will look fantastic and be healthy too.
Big compound movements, calisthenics, fasting and vitamins D/sunshine, good sleep, coffee (maybe plasma if u can afford it), eating fish veggies and steak, and white rice/tubers/fruits.
Think about the Belgian cow (lacks myo gene thus muscles hyeprtrophy uncontrollably). It’s never done a calf raise or lateral Flye in its life but has more sharp striated musculature than a tren loading amateur bodybuilder!
This has literally zero relevance to this topic since pretty much none of us have a myostatin gene deficiency. And you are not even talking about the same species. Why not mentioned how no “juiced up sprinter is as fast as a cheetah” or how “no drugged up powerlifter can pull like a gorilla” while you are at it? Honestly your “sense of humor” is really bad and it annoys me personally. If you want to provide valuable info, fine, but please stop trying to look funny.
Thank you for your response so basically you are saying the same thing as everyone else. Train hard, eat well, sleep and the gains will come. In another thread you have posted a video about posture and how it affects your body. Could you share that again ? I don’t find the thread
