Podcast on Bulking

T

Toolman

New Member
I've been listening to a podcast on bulking by Dan Gastelu on Bodybuilding.com. He talks a bit about muscle fibers and the differences between slow twitch, fast twitch glycolytic, and fast twitch oxidative glycolytic fibers. Very interesting stuff but only scratches the surface. It seems to me that the information he gives not only jives with the philosophy of HST, but gives justification for HST principles, though I think the training protocol Dan recommends is a little different. Have any of you listened to these podcasts, and/or have any suggestions on where I might learn more?

Here are links to both parts, and to Gastelu's page at bb.com:

Bulking part one.
Bulking part two.
Dan Gastelu's page.
 
The difference between muscle fibers becomes moot when you lift heavy enough, as they will all be recruited anyway.
 
No, I'm speaking of a percentage of your 1 rep max. Rep range doesn't matter in the big scheme of things. Reps ranges are just a convenient way to organize repetitions performed.
 
Totentanz said:
No, I'm speaking of a percentage of your 1 rep max. Rep range doesn't matter in the big scheme of things. Reps ranges are just a convenient way to organize repetitions performed.
Click to expand...

This is a bit contradictory to the podcast. As I understand it, muscle hypertrophy is a function of protein synthesis and in different muscle fibers protein synthesis is stimulated by different loads/reps. Muscle fiber recruitment may occur using near max RM weights, but protein synthesis may not. The author is suggesting modulating intensity, similar to HST, but I gather from workout to workout rather than changing every two weeks.
 
To clarify about HST... we are not using different rep ranges in order to stimulate all muscle fibers. We are using different rep ranges in order to extend progression of load. Have you read the HST article yet that outlines the four principles behind HST? Basically, it postulates that mechanical load is the primary cause of hypertrophy. It further elaborates on this point by stressing that chronic rather than acute stress is necessary, as well as progressively increasing the load in order to avoid repeated bout effect. Finally, you must take a break to decondition the muscles once you have progressed the load as far as you are able. That's it in a nutshell. Nothing really about saying you must do x number of reps for x weeks, then do y number of reps, etc etc. The whole point behind HST is to allow you to lift a load often enough to stimulate hypertrophy, while being able to progress that load long enough to make some good progress before you have to take a break.
 
Most of the research I've seen suggests (or claims outright) that you can indeed target specific muscle fibers during training, and that if you spend all of your time training with heavy weights/lower reps to stimulate growth of slow-twitch fibers, fast twitch fibers will atrophy. The reverse is also true. It seems to me that in addition to extending the progression of load - the importance of which I understand, HST works also because it stimulates protein synthesis in different muscle fiber types during different macro-cycles.
 
Well the research you've read is wrong. Explain to me, how your research shows that you can lift a maximal weight without recruiting all your muscle fibers? I just don't see how a muscle can give maximal force if only part of it is recruited. Doesn't make sense.

I also don't understand how your muscles will know many reps you plan to do during a set. Muscles know time under tension, that's all. Muscles don't know reps.

Okay, maybe the research isn't completely wrong, but it is basically pointless to train for fiber type, which is what the moral of the article I linked from Bryan was saying. Why train for fiber type when you don't need to? Your assumption that only lifting heavy in low reps will leave fast twitch fibers untrained and cause atrophy is wrong, by the way. Otherwise you'd see tons of tiny powerlifters.
 
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Based on the "Size Principle"( Carpinelli , etc), isn't the amount of effort exerted and not so much the load the main factor in muscle recruitment? There are studies using Kaatsu and some other recent works like (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2918506/) that show the environment for hypertrophy may not need high loads. If ones goal is to demonstrate the ability to lift high loads then training with said load is probably required. But if hypertrophy is more of a priority, perhaps one can achieve benefits with lesser and perhaps orthopedically more comforting loads.
 
I'm not questioning whether one could work with lesser loads to recruit all fibers or to achieve hypertrophy. I think we all know there are several avenues to those ends. What I take issue with is when these people - such as the one in this podcast referred to above - insist that we must train for fiber type and train all fiber types or we will basically immediately die. That particular argument falls flat in my mind. One can quite readily become big and strong without worrying about trying to recruit type IIB, IIA, etc etc. Further, the argument that lifting heavy somehow does not recruit all fibers, which is one I've seen espoused quite often on the net AND in the gym, simply blows my mind. I don't know how people expect to lift anything over say perhaps 85% of their 1 RM without recruiting all fibers.

My point is, why try to train for fiber type when you can just recruit them all quite easily. There is no need for it, therefore it is a waste of time.

Now what you are talking about - achieving hypertrophy by using lesser loads, sure that can be useful - even desirable, especially for people trying to avoid injury or who would otherwise be working with loads that are too heavy to be easily dealt with and so want to find a way to stick with lighter loads.
 
We know that training for strength is different than training for maximum hypertrophy, and I believe that it is, at least in part, because of the differences in muscle fibers. Further, muscle fiber recruitment isn't the only thing that stimulates protein synthesis and because of their different metabolic mechanisms (for lack of a more accurate term), different fibers are triggered to grow by different loads and presumably different rep-ranges and/or time-under-load.

My point is that this is all very interesting and may give insight into why HST works as well as it does.
 
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