The Bro Science Thread

Curls are of the devil

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One more workout and I’m promoted to ruling hell!

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You’re probably doing them with too much weight.

Just use like 50 lbs. and rep out till a fellow bro comes by and says " [something] guns, bro. :+1: ".

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I have a bro science theory about Zone 1-3 cardio directly burning body fat while not in a fasted state.

Glycogen (“carbs”, but not really) is likely being preserved in the muscles for times when they are actually needed, say sprints or heavy lifting. Zone 1-3 are so low heart rate and such low stimuli to any muscle, that using glycogen as an energy source likely isn’t justified.

More theory: I’d bet it’s actually a preservation/survival mechanism - imagine we are hunter gatherers for a minute. Why would your body use up it’s optimal energy source for non-life threatening tasks like walking - when a saber tooth tiger can jump out at you any minute? You’d need to sprint away from this thing, but wait - your body already burnt up it’s optimal fuel source for intense physical output…

Why would you hit the NOS button on a racecar when you’re not trying to race anyone?

Pure bro science!

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Hmmm. I think you’re onto something, but I need to think about it.

For some reason your post made me think about Chad Waterbury.

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Well I do believe there’s a difference between this and sarcoplasmic hypertrophy.

“Skeletal muscle fibers are multinucleated cells that contain mostly myofibrils suspended in an aqueous media termed the sarcoplasm. Select evidence suggests sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, or a disproportionate expansion of the sarcoplasm relative to myofibril protein accretion, coincides with muscle fiber or tissue growth during resistance training. There is also evidence to support other modes of hypertrophy occur during periods of resistance training including a proportional accretion of myofibril protein with fiber or tissue growth (i.e., conventional hypertrophy), or myofibril protein accretion preceding fiber or tissue growth (i.e., myofibril packing).”

(Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy in Skeletal Muscle: A Scientific “Unicorn” or Resistance Training Adaptation? - Roberts et al. 2020)

Nonetheless, I personally never cared how I gained muscle. I employ a wide variety of ranges, from 5 to 100… If it works, it works.

My bro science regarding higher reps stuff, for instance rear delts, is that it will “tire out” the muscles that are prioritized like the traps, then we can really burn and grow our rear delts.

I’ve never research if it’s true, but it is in my heart.

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Oh, some old-school bro-science.

I believe in ribcage expansion.

The ribs naturally expand when you breathe anyway, but are restricted by connective tissue and fascia (and to some extent, muscle tone).

With enough stretching over time with things like weighted pullovers (and, frankly, just heavy lifting) you can stretch things out so the natural baseline is a lot more expanded than before.

I also think ribcage expansion is one of the big reasons the old school lifters talked about how lifting made them healthier. They were able to exchange more air on every breath.

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I think doing a lot of pullovers in my early lifting days as a teenager definitely contributed to changing my chest from mostly barrel shaped to more square.
I still do pullovers, because they are awesome and a mostly forgotten exercise by modern gym idiots, i mean influencers.

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Depending on who you ask…

I believe biceps play a important role on the eccentric portion of a heavy bench .

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I also find they’re critical when training overspeed eccentrics with panties.

I’ll see myself out.

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Curls for the Girls. Probably the original Bro Science hypothesis.

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Enough said… :laughing:

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Excepting goal specific training (meet prep et cetera), for general strength & hypertrophy gains, full body routines that incorporate low & heavy, medium and high rep ranges same day work better than splitting strength & hypertrophy work across separate days.

You fully fatigue every muscle group this way, and assuming you’re allowing appropriate recovery time I believe your body is potentiated for an all hands on deck response to repair and rebuild itself.

Press, squat and deadlift heavy - hit other compound lifts in medium rep ranges and do isolation work high rep, especially for lagging body parts.

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I would include the upper back too. IMO, the compression of all muscles in the descent of the bar (on the bench press) acts as a “springboard” that help initiate the “launch” out of the hole. The thicker the muscles, the greater the “launch.”

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We got played guys. We all misunderstood this phrase.

summed up my last 6 years of programming in one paragraph. LOL

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Scott curls are underrated… ( only curl movement i like. So im bias)

Scott curls are far and away my favorite. Barbell Scott curls, dumbbell Scott curls not allowing dumbbells to touch, barbell Scott curls with chains for accommodating resistance are my favorite variations. I elevate the back of the seat to get a steeper angle and thus less tension in the stretched position and greater tension at the top.

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That’s a new one for me.

For dumbbell curls I like to choke one head against my thumb and supinate at the top of the rep. Also throw in high-rep reverse ez bar curls in between sets.

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[Firstly thanks for sharing, I enjoy reading different perspectives!] My current position is that more rest is generally better. I’m finding that anything less than 90 seconds (except for some isolation work) is too short unless my intensity is low, 30 seconds is just way too quick to rest on my regular sets unless I’m not pushing myself very hard (supersets, drop sets, rest/pause, etc. all excluded from this discussion, to be real). I used to think that if I rested less, I would enjoy the benefits of the cumulative fatigue factor and I would still be recovered (the greater muscle response during recovery part). Ended up doing a lot of half-effort sets because I was starting sets fatigued. I think that there’s a time and a place for lowering rest times, of course! But my experience has been that generally speaking, you gain less from that next “more intense” set(s) even if you take that to failure (which is sooner than it would be otherwise if you rest a bit more and recover more). In my simplified way of trying to make sense of it all, more rest leads to more quality reps, more quality reps leads to more beneficial volume, and more beneficial volume leads to more gains overall given time. Basically this:

But all that is just my take on it right now–I think you it is very possible to rest too much, but I’ve seen good progress recently playing around with the 2-5 minute timeframe for rest in between sets.

Although I will say that now you have me wanting to throw in a bunch of supersets and 1-minute rest periods in my next workout to keep it fresh, so there is that too lol

Weighted pull ups are so hard but they’re so good. All of my best back gains are from weighted pull ups, I wish I saw more people taking them seriously and training them hard.

I just started adding these to my workouts recently and I’ve been pleased so far!

Big truth right there, my current push up and my current pull up PR (both set last year) came when a crush was watching lol


Maybe not exactly bro science, but I think that over time adding just one rep to a single set for a movement pattern in a workout is seriously underrated and will lead to a lot of gains when focused on consistently. Consistently adding plus ones here and there over a longer period of time drives a slow progression that yields big results when looking at the big picture. Def something I wish I had started focusing on a few years ago.

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