BP

Now, normally I don’t ‘report’ on this kind of thing, but I really, really liked this email.

Why?

Because it made me realize that I’m NOT taking crazy pills!

See when I wrote Anabolic Again and was doing my research behind Anabolic Slow Down I felt like I was the only one who cared about this phenomena…but now seeing that big time fitness people like Vince Delmonte are also recognizing that their is something putting the breaks on muscle growth in experienced lifters…well it makes me happy in a weird sorta way.

Now, Vince’s theories and solutions are muc different then mine, but at least it proves a point.

If you take a look at this page http://bhlikes.it/mymb the message is obvious: Muscle growth eventually slows down.

But it’s not just the slow down I’m intrigued with.

It’s the different RATES (or speeds) that people seem to inately have for muscle growth…

Have you ever wondered why there is such a DIFFERENCE in the way people respond to their workouts?

Why some people ‘grow like weeds’ while others train as hard as they can for months on end and don’t see any progress.

This is one of my main areas of interest when it comes to muscle growth..

And I know the answer ISN’T protein!

That’s not to say that protein doesn’t have ANYTHING to do with your muscle building (because it does), but the point is that adding MORE protein doesn’t necessarily mean MORE muscle.

In a recently published trial using a very interesting method, this exact point was driven home in my mind.

60 subjects were put through a 16 week long, 3 day per week workout.

After the workout the subjects were divided into three groups based on the increase in their muscle cross sectional area.

Non responders saw no change or even negative change (-16 um2)

Moderate responders saw some decent gains (+1,111 um2)

Extreme responders…well they would make most of us really jealous (+2,475 um2)

(That’s 123% larger then the moderate people!)

After the groups were divided up the researchers looked for some explanation for the differences in size gains.

So what did they find?

Well…

• There was no difference in protein intake (fell right in  the range I recommend in How Much Protein)
• There was no difference in Essential Amino Acid intake
• No difference in BCAA intake
• No Difference in Leucine intake
• No difference in Calories.

Furthermore,

• There was no difference inr reported training volume
• There was no difference in reported training intensity.

So what can we conclude for this research.

1. It’s not the calories you eat or the protein (within reason).
2. It’s not even how MUCH you workout (again within reason).

This leaves me with only two real conclusions when it comes to what decides the rate at which you can build muscle:

The first is genetics, which unfortunately, you really can’t control.

Genetics may be the amount of receptors your muscles have, the amount of certain hormones you have, or even the amount of satelitte cells you have available for muscle growth.

Sadly, most, if not all of these things are decided at or near birth.

The second is the quality of your workout.

This is the only part you can control. If it’s not nutrition (again within reason) then it must have to do with the quality, design or implementation of your workout program…

Unfortunately this is also the part I don’t have an answer for.

Because everyone is different.

If you want something super advanced I have Anabolic Again, and if you are looking for something really targeted I have the Adonis
Index.

But if you are just looking for what will work BEST for you then I have to give you the following advice:

TRIAL AND ERROR.

Honestly, it would be SUPER EASY for me to tell you that my workouts are the best and all the rest are garbage, but really this wouldn’t be true.

So here’s the trick…

The thing that sets people apart in the gym…people who see success and people who don’t…is Metrics.

Try something and measure it. If you are improving then stick with it for as long as you keep improving.

If you are not improving then BE HONEST with yourself and LET IT GO.

Don’t worry about the marketing or pseudoscience or the arguments in forums about what is right and what is wrong, just get a workout and give it a try.

Find something that works then stick with it until it stops working.

I really can’t give any better advice then that (when it comes to muscle buiding)

If muscle building is your goal (and steroids are not an option for you) then why not try every workout you can get your hands on until you find what works for you…because as we learned above, what works for some people DOESN’T WORK AT ALL for others…and vice versa.

And since you can’t control the genetics part, you may as well do everything you can to control the work out part…

Just be sure to keep measurements so you can actually track progress.

Without metrics, all the work and trial and error is pointless.

As my friend ‘Pip’ said:

‘try and test’ the info and then ‘keep or reject’

BP

Of course, when you are working in the industry you have to be VERY careful about what yous say.

(Heck, even after you’ve left, you still have to be careful – spies everywhere)

So the best way to discredit a competitor’s product was by simply saying it ‘destroyed my stomach’…

So no mention of the flavor, consistency, effectiveness, cost…just ‘destroyed my stomach’.

It was great because it wasn’t debatable, and it was a scary ’cause and effect’ association to put on a product.

You can even use my favorite technique (back in the day) and do the discredit wrapped in a compliment:

“It’s actually a very good formula, but it completely destroyed my stomach”

So the point of today’s blog post is when asking about a diet, or a workout or a supplement from a so called expert (or even a true expert) Careful not to get swayed by these types of quick responses.

Most of the time the expert isn’t using it to be discrediting, they could be giving an honest answer…but it’s still something to look for, because there are times when it is being used on purpose.

BP

“Mark McGwire admits using steroids when he broke baseball’s home run record in 1998. Sent 3:13pm

Makes for an interesting prelude to the Olympic games.

BP

False Advertising or just perpetuating a myth?

BP

………

Hey Brad, I’m a big lover of Eat Stop Eat, and a massive proponent of many of your thoughts and theories, so don’t take any of this as confrontational or second guessing in nature, I just wondered which variables you would manipulate in order to gain LBM most effectively whilst following the ESE lifestyle?

Correct me if I’m wrong but I’m sure I’ve seen you comment that you don’t believe eating much above your BMR is necessary, neither is excessive protein intake or mega dosing your peri-workout nutrition. So I guess my real question is, if you HAD TO gain say 5-10lbs of skeletal muscle as quickly as possible, naturally, and assuming you’re already training using a program with built in progressive overload, which nutritional variables would you tweak? Would love to know exactly how you would go about it. Thanks for reading, and have a great New Year!

Great Question! If I had to gain 5-10 pounds of Skeletal muscle as quickly as possible, I’d be screwed. I’m 32 and have been training for over 15 years. Without drugs, I’m not putting on another ten pounds of skeletal muscle. Another ten pounds would put me well above the normal range for my height. Now, I can put on 10 pounds of lean mass…I could do that in an hour or two…add ten pounds to my bench/squat/deadlift/clean…I could do that too..maybe over the course of a year, but ten pounds of actual muscle, not happening.

B

OK, apologies. Allow me to rephrase the question if you will. What if you were 21, 180 lbs @ 5’9” and had all the time in the world to eat, sleep and train? How would you then optimally add actual muscle, whilst adhering (possibly the wrong word, I don’t even see ESE as something you need to adhere to, it’s so easy!) to Eat Stop Eat?

Ah…Ok that’s way more fun.

I’d do stuff you can do for high volume, that is taxing on the big muscles and that doesn’t break you down. I would workout in the gym 2-3 times a week working the muscles but not blowing myself apart. But that wouldn’t be the big stuff, the big stuff would be 2 times a week outside with a couple of buddies doing a combination of sled dragging and farmers walks. Each session would be two to three hours long. The goal wouldn’t be to burn out, or to be a sweaty mess, but just to do lots of work.

At 21 I wouldn’t rule out ‘eating big’ since their is probably still some juvenile muscle growth going on…but I would still ‘temper’ it with Eat Stop Eat.

I’m still not convinced that a 5?9? frame can add 10 more pounds of straight muscle (depending on how long you’ve been training for), but based on my experience this would be how I’d try to get there.

Thanks for the response. Great advice, much appreciated!

Considering some of the things happening in the news today, I thought this was timely. Biggest mistake we make with regards to building muscle is false expectations of what is actually possible.

Hi Brad!

I read almost every article u wrote, and your view is very impressive.
But I have 1 question (maybe off topic, sorry)
You say the amount of protein is not so important, the quality of the food is not so important (ok avoid crap), 2-3 workout per week is enough to keep or build muscle.
What is then the mistake what most of the average  gym rat make?
Ok we can see some real life example like you, but every competitive bodybuilder use (or they lie) the old method (6-8 meals, lot of protein above 300 grams, lot of training, cardio everyday) and not only for the end of the preparation, but from the beginning.

Hey Wood,

The average gym rat makes the mistake of thinking they can get ’steroid-like’ growth without taking steroids, plain and simple.

I don’t think bodybuilders lie when they say they eat 8 meals a day, protein above 300 grams, lots of training and Cardio. I think this is 100% true.

I’ll even admit that this might be the right way to do things when you are on 3 grams of test a week, combined with some GH and Insulin, plus maybe a little Clenbuterol.

And, I’ll also admit that there is a possibility that even the non-bodybuilder-guys who use a “small amount of drugs” like cover models (and I suspect even before and after models), might benefit from eating this way.

I’m no expert when it come to drugs and the way they alter nutrient needs.

But for normal, non-drug using adult human beings it is your genetics combined with your training that determines how much muscle you can add, your protein intake and food quality has very little to do with it. They still plays a role mind you, just not the role that advertisers would make you think.

Bottom line: You can NOT get drug like effects from powdered protein.

BP

As far I am concerned there is only 1 thing that has shown a clear, reproducible dose-response relationship with muscle size in humans (other than height).

It’s not protein or calories. It’s not even workout length, weight lifted or even Growth Hormone.

While all these things may (or may not) play a role, the only thing that has a clear dose response relationship is testosterone.

We know some athletes use it. We know some recreational lifters use it. We know some fitness models use it. We even know that some h0llywood celebrities use it. (I’m saying ‘some’ to keep me out of trouble).

We also know that for various reasons a large percentage of these people lie about using it.

This skews all of our data.

Because people lie about using steroids we have no idea what the natural limitations of the human body are. It is a GIANT confounding variable in the study of exercise and muscle growth.

For instance:

Eating high amounts of protein has been a giant let down for most people, so why is it still be touted as a muscle builder? Well, maybe protein works differently for guys and girls who are on 2,500 mg of Testosterone per week.

Eating big? A great way to make you fat. UNLESS…more calories may actually mean more muscle when you are using D-bol and Trenbolone.

It always kills me when I hear big guys (typically power lifters) tell little guys that the key to getting big is to eat McDonalds 8 times a day. For some reason they leave out the side order of Anadrol.

Without mentioning the steroids, the ‘prescription’ for getting huge muscles is also the exact same prescription for becoming an obese North American.

Now, I’m not advocating steroid use, but what I am saying is that to truly start to understand what causes muscle growth, we need everyone to be open about steroid use.

This is why most fitness magazines are useless, as are most fitness websites. Having people tell you about their awesome new workout that helped them put on 30 pounds of muscle without telling you about their new steroid stack that went along with the workout is just useless information.

As is ‘muscle building advice’ from guys who have been the exact same weight for the last 5 years.

The bottom line is that we are not nearly as far along in understanding muscle growth as we would like to believe, and we are not going to move forward until steroids are openly discussed.

BP

Truthfully there are many more papers that seem to fall in the horrible category the truth is, even the worst paper ever published still has some value.

There is no such thing as research with absolutely no value.

While these seems like a typical ‘Pilon ramble’ let me assure you…we’re talking about bodybuilding.

You see for some reason, over the last decade we decided that bodybuilding is dumb, useless, and a complete waste of time.

We junked bodybuilding and replaced it with functional training, sports specific training and the like.

We threw out bodybuilding before we completely understood it.

And just like research papers, there is no such thing as a completely useless type of exercise.

There are things to be learned from bodybuildling.

Good things.

**Before I go any further I need to be clear..there is next to NO research on bodybuilding.

Everything you read on line or in magazines is nothing more than theories and conjecture.

What I’m about to write is no different – these are my theories on bodybuiding.**

Body building and weight training are NOT the same thing – they are close cousins maybe, but they are not interchangeable.

Weight training involved using your muscles to move a weight.

In power-lifting the goal is to move as much weight as possible. In Olympic lifting the goal is to perfect moving a weight through a certain ‘movement’ as efficiently as possible.

In bodybuilding the goal is to contract your muscles using weight to add some resistance.

Similar but very different.

In fact, while things like Olympic lifting and Power-lifting are definitely ‘weight training’ I am starting to think that body building is ‘muscle training’.

Again – similar, but very different.

I think the difference lies in the mental approach.

Here’s an example.

Stand up and let your arms hang at your sides.

Now, with your arms still hanging flex your biceps as tightly as possible (don’t curl your arms yet, just leave them hanging but flexed).

Keeping that same intense level of flex, slowly curl your arm up at the elbow until its fully curled – concentrating on the flex the entire way.

Pause for a second or two at the top then while keeping your bicep flex, slowly lower your arm back down.

That is a bodybuildling bicep curl.

Now imagine this same degree of concentration while holding a weight.

You are using weight to resist the contraction, but the mindset is all about the contraction and not the weight.

Using this technique, a guy that can curl 60 pound dumbbells for sets of 6-8 may only be able to curl 40-45′s before he has to break his concentration on the contraction and start thinking about moving the weight.

From my experience, you can lift a helluva lot more thinking about the weight then when you are thinking about the muscle…but if you want to make a muscle bigger..then there may be something in this approach.

My random speculation -

In the muscles that grow well for you..I bet you really ‘feel’ the exercises that you normally choose.

For the muscles that don’t grow well for you…I bet you really ‘feel’ the weight.

For me, I feel the contraction in my chest every time I do bench press or dumbbell press.

But shoulder press, I feel the weight moving. I’m strong on this lift, but I just don’t ‘feel’ it in my shoulders.

Coincidentally, my chest is much more developed then my shoulders.

(like I said, we’re theorizing here)

So, if the feel is important, then what do bodybuilders do right?

1) They pick exercises that they feel in the muscles they want to work.

2) They do things like ‘preexhaust’ a muscle to ‘help’ it feel an exericise.

3) They concentrate on the muscle in question during the workout.

All of these techniques are things we through way in favor of becoming Olympic lifting /power-lifting /functional training/athletic training wannabees (not meant to be derogatory, just saying..)

But, if your goal is simply to grow a specific muscle, or group of muscles in order to change the way your body looks, then there may be something we can learn from the way a bodybuilder approaches ‘working a muscle’.

In the end, the answer to losing weight will be to eat less, and the answer to building muscle is working out ‘more’ but this may be one little step towards a better definition of ‘more’.

BP