Unrelated but quite interesting. Thought I’d share.
- The link below is part 2 of the series. I just saw something strange: one of the subjects was measured by the “bodpod” to have 7% bodyfat - a mighty feat according to the forums - yet looked pretty typical skinny/fat.
- An old poster on the bb.com forums named Slippy posted a series of very interesting theory and some practical insights that seemed logical to me, given my experiences and observations from real life and forum progress pics. Basically, bodybuilders make the best gains when they have high amounts of mitochondria and other energy substrates in cells. This theme relates to the “pump”, burn, sacroplasmic hypertrophy, etc. and other “terms” that seem to be disregarded these days as bs/broscience/marginal.
Some principles that stuck out to me:
- You need to incorporate “burn” sets or other high frequency, high rep (relatively low intensity) work for the major muscle groups to prime your “food factory” aka efficient metabolism.
- While higher volume/frequency training (and other things I’m sure) of bodybuilding up until the 90’s allowed for this active food factory, the modern “bulk and cut” philosophy when applied by the average sedentary male is not optimal because they gain much more fat than muscle and lose much more muscle than fat, respectively.
- If you look at the unehanced population, those who come from a “anerobic endurance” sporting background (sprinting, water polo, wrestling, etc.) can bulk up quickly offseason with seemingly no fat. And even the skinny ones display solid “tone” signifiying a prime metabolic state.
- This was from another poster but I thought it interesting, particularly in regards to the advice given to beginners: “In an ideal world, I strongly suggest a novice trainee should work at building a metabolic as well as the protective and skillset foundations, before they really go at it with strength training. But, the truth is, most of us probably don’t actually develop a satisfactory level until we’re well into their immediate stage.”
When I read that I thought about my starting strength cycle and how poundages went up, I ate shitload of food, bodyweight went up but I looked horrible.
There’s a bunch of other threads in the archives if you’d be interested (google).
Have a good long weekend folks!