Month: August 2016

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Hyperplasia vs. Hypertrophy in Skeletal Muscle

One of the long debated issues in terms of training is whether muscle growth occurs only through hypertrophy (an increase in muscle size) or if hyperplasia, an actual increase in the number of muscle fibers.  That is, does the number of fast/slow twitch muscle fiber types in your body actually change in response to strength or endurance stimulus? Or just the volume, and you’re stuck with what your genetics dictate?

The short answer is yes-ish.

Here’s the long answer:

Let me make one clarification here.  Well, two.  The first is that I am talking about skeletal muscle.  Cardiac muscle acts a little bit differently in how it grows with stress and we don’t lift weights for a bigger heart.  Perhaps if we did there would be more love in the world.

Also, I’m talking about training induced growth.  You can cause some goofy stuff to occur when you ablate a muscle (i.e.… Keep Reading

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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.

Back in the day everybody knew you had to consume carbs and fluids (endurance athlete) or carbs and protein (resistance training) for optimal results.… Keep Reading

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The Transition Phase Between Dieting and Gaining

I received a question in my having to do with manipulating calories and macronutrients for optimal transitioning from gaining to dieting phases and vice versa and this seemed like an excellent impetus to write about this topic in some detail.

Because while a lot of people tend to jump back and forth from one to the other (often, I think, spinning their wheels a bit), taking a more long-term approach, a nutritional periodization of sorts, can be beneficial in terms of working with rather than against the body’s inherent physiology.

Gaining to Dieting: The Pre-Diet Phase

Way back in the early days of bodybuilding you would hear physique athletes talk about a “hardening phase” which was meant as a transition from their off-season bulking to their contest diet.  Now, in hindsight, it probably had as much to do with switching out their drugs from heavy androgens to more anabolic compounds to reduce water retention but it basically entailed “cleaning up the diet” to prepare for the actual contest prep.… Keep Reading