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Muscle Fiber Adaptations to Rep Max or Relative Intensity

So there’s a war brewin’.  Or rather a war going on.  The war over volume versus intensity/tension.  So over the past three weeks I wrote a series of articles examining the issue of muscular tension, it’s importance in initiating growth (it is the primary factor in growth no matter how anybody wants to cut it) and, among other topics discussed the idea of effective reps.

What Are Effective Reps?

The idea here is that the repetitions that actually turn on the FAK/PA/mTOR pathway are the repetitions done under maximum recruitment (said recruitment being reachable in multiple ways).  With some currently unknown number of “effective reps” being optimal for turning on growth (nobody including me has EVER said there isn’t a volume component to growth. … Keep Reading

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Evidence of a Ceiling Effect for Training Volume in Trained Men

I had previously reviewed this paper on the website.  However, it was announced on April 28th, 2020, that this paper had been retracted.  The reason given was:

This article has been retracted at the request of the authors on April 16, 2020. They performed an a posteriori analysis of the data and identified inconsistencies that changed their evaluation of the results. The authors apologize for the inconvenience.

But no more information has been provided at this time.

Note: posteriori does not have to do with your butt.  So settle down Bret.

My hope is that the paper will be republished or at least the change in results interpretation will be made available.  But rather than simply depublish my article, I felt it was the honest thing to make it clear that it had been retracted at this time.

If, at some point, it is republished with new results, I will re-examine it. … Keep Reading

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A Challenge to Brad Schoenfeld and Others

So I had originally said I would leave this be, that this wasn’t a rap battle, after writing my last detailed criticism of the recent Brad Schoenfeld study.  Well clearly that’s not the case.

More on the Statistics

First let me point readers to a thorough analysis of the statistics used in Brad’s paper by Brian Bucher.  Basically he takes them apart and shows that none of the THREE metrics supports their strongly worded conclusions.

None of them.

In this vein, here’s something interesting.

Brad and his group have NEVER used Bayesian statistics until this paper.  I searched on my folder of his papers and the term Bayesian shows up 4 times. … Keep Reading

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A Response to James Krieger and Brad Schoenfeld

So there’s a war brewing in online fitness land.  About three weeks ago, Brad Schoenfeld et. al. released a paper purporting to show that more volume meant more growth with 30 sets per week for upper body and 45 sets for lower body outperforming lower and more moderate volumes.  To say there has been a shitstorm, much of which is driven by myself, is a bit of an understatement.

I wrote a fairly critical piece about that paper (that had issues, see below) and brought up several other problems with it (including one I will finish this piece with).  My questions at Brad or James went completely unanswered with any number of deflections and obfuscations occurring throughout. Even when others, not me, asked similar questions, they went unanswered or were deflected with the kind of behaviors only the best gurus use.

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Protein Intake and Post Workout Protein Synthesis

A long standing debate in the field of nutrition is how much protein should be consumed after training to provide an optimal stimulus for protein synthesis.  Let me note that only focusing on MPS is short-sighted at best and moronic at worst.  Today I want to look at the following paper which addresses the issue.

MacNaughton et. al. The response of muscle protein synthesis following whole-body resistance exercise is greater following 40 g than 20 g of ingested whey protein.  hysiol Rep, 4 (15), 2016, e12893

Around Workout Nutrition

This paper is quite timely given that I’m currently mired (yes, mired) in the around workout nutrition chapter of the woman’s book.  Now, in recent years, the whole post-workout nutrition thing (or more generally around workout or peri-workout nutrition) has become a little bit more confusing than it was originally.… Keep Reading