[quote]THS wrote:
Ok. You claimed his weight increase was all muscle. I’m claiming its simply LBM. Theres a big difference. This isn’t some kind of personal affront on you.
[/quote]
No, but you are arguing with the sole purpose of ‘‘beating the expert’’ while clinging to your opinion without any openness of mind, which isn’t far off.
Lean body mass includes mostly:
- muscle weight
- water weight (both intra and extracellular
- glycogen storage (each gram stores 2.7g of water)
- creatine storage (each gram stores 2.7g of water)
- bone mass
- organs mass
- other body fluids such as blood and synovial fluids
- intra stomach content (non-digested food)
Objectively, we can pretty much rule out bone mass, organ mass, body fluids, intra stomach content. Which leaves us with:
muscle weight, water weight, glycogen storage, creatine storage
Let’s first talk about glycogen storage. Among normal sized men the total amount of stored glycogen is around 300 to 500g (which includes both the carbohydrate and water content). So around 1 to 1.5 pound. Rarely will hockey players have depleted carbs stores during the season… while their diet basically suck, they do consume plenty of carbs (pasta, bread, continental breakfast at the hotel, gatorade, etc.). So it’s not like they are going from 0g of glycogen stored to 500g. And even if some form of surcompensation would occur post-season, studies have shown that glycogen surcompensation can increase glycogen stores by around 50%, or 250g (0.5lbs or so). Even if something magical happen and he doubles his glycogen stores it still represents only a 1lbs gain.
Then there is creatine storage. First of all my athletes rarely use creatine. And if they do, then it can account for a total non-muscle gain of a maximum of 5lbs (according to both practical evidence and a review of literature). This 5lbs is ‘‘one time only’’ due to the initial water retention and cell swelling. But as I mentioned, I rarely use creatine with my athletes, especially not in the early stages of the off-season.
Now there is the issue of water retention. It is a known fact that competitive bodybuilders get a huge water rebound after a show. Heck, I had a client gain close to 45lbs in one week and he was unable to wear his shoes!!!
But this amount of water retention is typical to bodybuilders and maybe other sports who undergo severe SHORT TERM dehydration. Bodybuilders are especially likely to gain that amount of water because of their use of pharmaceutical diuretics. Diuretics excrete way more water and electrolytes than can be done naturally. And they do so by screwing up the aldosterone and anti-diuretic hormones.
As with every hormone in the body, if you mess with them you will eventually get the back swing of the pendulum!
In the case of aldosterone and the ADH, once diuretics wear off there is a HUGE swing back toward excessive water retention of the like that is not seen under normal circumstances, which explains the huge water rebound after a show.
Hockey players are NOT using diuretics and they are NOT chronically dehydrated. So they do NOT get that back swing of the pendulum.
As far as testosterone increasing water retention, there IS a dose-response relationship. Give 500-1000mg of testosterone or dianabol or deca-durabolin to someone and he is likely to get bloated, especially if he doesn’t use anti-estrogens or anti-aromatase.
However I’m yet to see a bodybuilder get bloated with very small doses of testosterone. Heck, even at 200-250mg per week there is basically no bloat at all unless someone is very prone to side effects.
Then put the same guy on 2000mg of test and watch him blow up like a swiss ball! As I mentioned, sodium (and thus water) retention from AAS is dose-dependent. That’s why going up to a normal test level of 10mg per day, even if that represents a large PROPORTIONAL increase, will not lead to water retention.
Then back to cortisol. Cortisol increases water retention WAY more than androgens and estrogens. Have you even seen a patient on cortisone (artificial derivative of cortisol?) they are barely recognisable!
Since cortisol levels increase WAY more during the season than testosterone does during the off-season, if anything the players should retain LESS water in the off-season. And from the way the guys look, it is something that we would easily agree on.
So that leaves us only with muscle weight, and maybe increased intramuscular triglceride content which is non-significant anyway.
So even under the worst case scenario the 20-25lbs gain would actually be at least 12-15lbs muscle, likely more than that.
As I mentioned though, it is not NEW muscle being built, but rather regained muscle. Th plasticity of muscular adaptation, call it fascia stretching, muscle memory or whatever, is very real and enable one to build muscle tissue faster than usual for a certain period of time.
[quote]THS wrote:
No we are still comparing apples amigo. Test regardless of source is shown to increase Intracellular Fluid. Your guy has had a 100% increase in test production according to those numbers, for the sake of argument as you are saying he trains 4 months out of 12 we’ll also his his GH production is up, which will additionally increase his LBM by increasing his intracellular fluid.[/quote]
Go ahead, inject yourself with 3mg of testosterone per week and see exactly how much water you’ll gain… common be serious!
Also do not forget that the in-season diet of these guys is shit, which means junk, which means HIGH SODIUM, which means water retention. As I mentioned earlier, their level of water retention is normally higher during the season than off-season.
Cortisol increasing ECW more so than T is, at best, conjecture.
[quote]THS wrote:
You’ve competed on stage yes? I dunno if you’ve competed year after year or what, but you will realise just how hard it is to gain new muscle year on year.[/quote]
Again bad example… I (and bodybuilders/strength athletes) train year round. Their body is, in a sense, accomodated to the specific stress of strength training. Hockey players train around 4 months out of the year. So every year when they begin their off-season their body is basically in ‘‘beginner gains mode’’.
BTW, they are not gaining 20-25lbs year after year either. Personally I never made such claims. 15 or even 20lbs in some cases, yes. But in reality over the spent of a year they might gain 5lbs like most ‘‘regular’’ trainees, it’s just that their pattern of gain is up and down instead of being steadily and slowly upward.
Anyone else experience this?