Bro Research Episode 23 - Metabolic Stress as a Potentiator of Hypertrophic Gains

In fitness and nutrition, minute details can drive us apart, but looking practically at this beautifully intricate question of getting more bigger can help bring us together.

Metabolic stress is masochistically fun and mechanistically complicated.

And yes we don’t really know if these strategies will have an independent effect outside of the mechanotransduction model.

BUT around 30-40% of 1RM is very likely going to equate on a set volume basis to higher loads in terms of hypertrophy so you don’t have much to lose outside of weight on the bar in lower rep ranges and may potentially have a lot to gain by differentiating your training stimulus.

Therefore, if you are extremely “risk” averse and want to only train in the muscular tension bean counter rep and weight model go for it! If you want to NOT even “waste” some portion of your training year experimenting, having fun, and playing with different strategies you can be very confident that you will not shrivel up and die…in fact at the very least you may even be able to build a better pump and you may potentiate your ability to drive more adaptation via the mechanotransduction model.

References:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29564… https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti…