bluejeff
Level 7 Valued Member
Rather than hijacking the thread from which I quote Watchnerd below, I figured I'd just start a thread about this.
We often hear that the three main drivers behind hypertrophy are metabolic stress, muscle damage, and mechanical tension. However, more recent research has been narrowing in on mechanical tension being the main driver. Linked to this is the idea of "training to failure." As I understand the literature I have read, the closer one is to "failure" per set, the more tension the muscle fibers actually experience. The researcher below explains much of this. Much of it requires a basic understanding of how muscle fibers fire and contract.
Links to books, FAQ, and blog
Article list
For those of you who maybe just want to know how to implement these ideas into training, refer to the last section of the FAQ: "how can we optimize strength training programs?" and "how can we implement periodization and ongoing variety?"
As to the topic of mechanical tension and hypertrophy:
I certainly don't have all the answers, but this from the same researcher I linked to above. I haven't even had time to comb through all of this, though the more I read, the more the same ideas and conclusions are seen.
This one is specifically about why mechanical tension may be the main driver behind hypertrophy. Interestingly, he cites how denervated muscle fibers have been shown to hypertrophy when exposed to stretch. The entire article goes into how the ideas behind hypertrophy have been tested, and why mechanical tension seems to be the most likely cause. For those who don't want to read the entire article in its technicality, the large black and white text box at the very top of the article summarizes it, and there are big, colorful text fields that summarize each section/point.
This one is specifically about the "metabolic stress" theory, and the holes in it:
We often hear that the three main drivers behind hypertrophy are metabolic stress, muscle damage, and mechanical tension. However, more recent research has been narrowing in on mechanical tension being the main driver. Linked to this is the idea of "training to failure." As I understand the literature I have read, the closer one is to "failure" per set, the more tension the muscle fibers actually experience. The researcher below explains much of this. Much of it requires a basic understanding of how muscle fibers fire and contract.
Links to books, FAQ, and blog
Chris Beardsley
shor.by
Article list
For those of you who maybe just want to know how to implement these ideas into training, refer to the last section of the FAQ: "how can we optimize strength training programs?" and "how can we implement periodization and ongoing variety?"
As to the topic of mechanical tension and hypertrophy:
We don't 100% understand, mechanistically, what causes hypertrophy. If it's tension, where does metabolite induced fatigue fit in? Is 'the burn' just another way to create mechanical tension via the size principle exhausting all the little fibers first? Or is there something else going on in terms of adaptation?
I certainly don't have all the answers, but this from the same researcher I linked to above. I haven't even had time to comb through all of this, though the more I read, the more the same ideas and conclusions are seen.
This one is specifically about why mechanical tension may be the main driver behind hypertrophy. Interestingly, he cites how denervated muscle fibers have been shown to hypertrophy when exposed to stretch. The entire article goes into how the ideas behind hypertrophy have been tested, and why mechanical tension seems to be the most likely cause. For those who don't want to read the entire article in its technicality, the large black and white text box at the very top of the article summarizes it, and there are big, colorful text fields that summarize each section/point.
This one is specifically about the "metabolic stress" theory, and the holes in it: