Hi Eric, I’m Starting Max-OT tomorrow after being inspired by you! I was reading some reviews on it and many folks said that their results from a 12 week cycle were strictly strength increases, not so much size and the reps were too low to generate sufficient hypertrophy... What's your take on this being an Exercise Science/Phys guy? Thanks for all the help! -Mike Mike, There is no such thing as gains being strictly one or the other; muscles don't have on and off switches like that. It’s a continuum, as with everything in the body. Yes a traditional bodybuilding program dedicated to the 8-12 rep range will elicit more size than strength, and yes a program like Max OT dedicated to the 4-6 rep range will elicit more strength than size. But it’s not strictly one or the other; you will get bigger and stronger on both programs. Secondly, if you are not getting stronger in the long run, no matter what rep range you are working with, as a natural bodybuilder you are not getting bigger muscles, period. Progressive overload is the only stimuli that will make muscle fibers grow. Thirdly, it has been shown that once you are past the beginning phase of adapting to weight training, meaning that you are neurologically adapted to the lifts and you've gained your initial spurt of muscle, lifting in the "strength" rep range is the best way to add muscle. Why? Because once you've already made your neurological strength gains, your bone density has increased, collagen has aligned itself towards the forces you are putting on your body, ligament and tendon strength has improved and your form is efficient, the ONLY way for you to get stronger is by increasing the size of your muscle fibers. That's it. So if you are getting stronger, and you're not a beginner anymore...you are by default getting bigger. You have to be. Either that, or you still have corrections to make in your form, or you are still making your CNS more efficient. But again, it’s unlikely those things are happening in isolation, normally your CNS gets more efficient, your form gets better, and you are growing some muscle tissue all simultaneously. That being said, getting stronger in the 8-12 rep range will elicit the most size gains in comparison to lower rep ranges. However, one will not get stronger in the 8-12 rep range forever if they train exclusively within that range. As with anything you will eventually plateau, so you have to periodize your training. You can NEVER, I repeat NEVER, look at and evaluate a program in isolation. The body is an adaptive machine; the way it functions, responds and grows is dependent on its environment and previous adaptations. Meaning if you have been training heavy for the last couple years, and you ask your gym buddy, "hey man I'm not making gains anymore, what should I do?" and he tells you "try Max OT, it worked great for me!" So then you decide to try out Max OT...but ain't jack-diddly gonna happen. Your body is getting the same stimulus it’s been getting for years, so it has no reason to make new adaptations and grow. On the other hand your buddy, who was following Arnold's encyclopedia of bodybuilding (high volume, high frequency training) for a year and hit a plateau, made great gains once he switched to Max OT. That's why you get people who report both poor gains and amazing gains on ALL programs. Most people don't understand the concept that programs and their effectiveness are completely interrelated and interdependent on the current adaptations to weight training your body has made. Now yes, there are some exceptions to things I've said above. Drugs throw it all out the window. There is a well known study comparing men lifting weights and those not. Half the lifters got a placebo, half got testosterone; half the non lifters got a placebo the other half got testosterone. By the end of the study the researchers found that the non lifting group on steroids made more gains in strength and lean body mass gains than the placebo-taking lifting group. And of course, the testosterone lifting group gained the most. Point being, steroids tend to make weight training effective no matter what you do. Obviously the more you put in the more you get out, or every drug user would be Mr. Olympia, but I digress. There are other exceptions to the statement: "you must get stronger to get bigger". For example one can increase muscle-size from transient hypertrophy and sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. Transient hypertrophy is what bodybuilders call "the pump". You get your muscles engorged with blood from lifting weights and pumping it up and boom; you gain an inch of size in the span of minutes. That is transient hypertrophy, temporary growth. You feel the muscle work, you see it grow, and you assume that this feeling is the sensation of growth. This is understandable, hell you are making your muscle grow right before your eyes, you can see it, you can feel it, and it’s got to be the best way to make them grow right? Well, not really, it'll work in the beginning of your lifting career, but everything works in the beginning and it works if you’re on drugs, but everything works if you're on drugs. The only time the “pump” is an effective way to increase muscle size is during the few minutes you are pumped up. So unless you plan on doing a full body pump-up routine every 5 minutes, you can ignore routines and ideologies focused on pump-chasing as a method to creating sustainable muscle growth. On the other hand, sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is worthy of note and consideration. Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is basically the increase in size of everything in the muscle that isn't actually muscle fiber. Essentially, sarcoplasm is the tissue that makes up the structure of the energy supply to the actual muscle fiber. Growth of this tissue comes from higher volume work, more time under tension, increased amounts of lactate in the muscle and increased glycogen levels in the muscle. Think of the muscle fiber itself as an engine. It’s mechanical in nature, and to lift greater loads it has to be able to produce more power. But just like an engine, it requires “fuel” for it to work, the sarcoplasm is essentially this fuel. The more powerful your engine gets the more fuel it consumes in the process. So, as your muscle fibers grow in size and contractile strength, they require more and more fuel to supply that power. In the body this comes in the form of increased glycogen storage capacity, increased capillary density, increased lactate buffering capacity, increased mitochondrial density, and a bunch of other stuff that in the end is just a vast support network to the actual contractile muscle tissue. When you get stronger, and increase "engine size" you also get increased "fuel supply", so any strength training program (like Max OT for example), will elicit both hypertrophy in actual muscle tissue and in the sarcoplasm. However, you can stimulate additional sarcoplasmic hypertrophy by working with very high workloads and higher rep ranges, and by reducing rest time and increasing time under tension. This type of hypertrophy can occur regardless of whether or not you are getting stronger. Think about it, if you make your engine work longer and with less rest, even if you aren't making it produce more power (by lifting progressively heavier loads), it will require more fuel, and you will get size gains in the form of sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. This happens because you are forcing the muscle to adapt to the need to have more fuel to do the additional work. However, if you focus on this type of training exclusively and neglect lifting heavier loads, your muscles will not need to stay powerful. They will simply adapt to increase your workload capacity and may lose strength and fiber size without the stimulus of heavier weights. You don't want to trade muscle fiber for sarcoplasm. You want both. Again, the solution here is periodizing your training. Go through phases of strength-focused training, and then volume-focused training. When you plateau with one program, switch to another. Don't get trapped in the myth that one type of training is best. For further information, check out WNBF Pro Alberto Nunez's article on training programs and periodization. Do you have a bodybuilding question for Eric? Send your questions to erichelms@3dmusclejourney.com To learn more about Eric Helms; click the link below. |
