Just Wondering

[Joker13]

Hope I can get my point across

For muscles to grow they need more stimulation then they are used to.

For sake of arguement lets use someone who has never trained before.

He gets to the gym and wants a big chest so he does flat bench press. Starts out with 100lbs and does that same weight for 2 months and gets some growth.

subject 2 new at training same size strengh starts at 100lbs but keeps increasing his weights and in 2 months reaches 200lbs.


Will subject 2 be any bigger? My point is muscles only grow at a certain rate

[Cradler]

Ceteris paribus, Subj. 2 will definitely be bigger. Your body is always trying to adapt to the workload given it, so once Subj. 1's body has adapted to 100 lbs., he won't grow past what his body needs to lift 100 lbs. Subj. 2 will be constantly upping the weight, forcing his body to adapt to each step, then raising the bar a little more - progression, basically. So yes, he'll grow more.

[Joker13]

But isnt there a limit on how fast they will grow reguardless of the stimulation

Dang made me look up Ceteris paribus, (all things being equal)

[Ross86]

Yep, because the person lifting heavier weights will have larger muscles due to the stimulus of heavier weights. Does the other subject that never increased weight increase repetitions? The individual lifting lighter weights would not be as strong, but would be better conditioned if he/she increased the number of repetitions.

I just looked at this article:
http://sportsmedicine.about.com/od/a...eFiberType.htm

There are links to other interesting articles near the end.. I am going to read up on it when I get the chance.

[Darkhorse]

Subject One = Diminished Returns

[iron_worker]

If I could increase my bench 100lbs in 2months I would be SOOOO happy. I think if you're talking about 2 months, the difference would be small but to actually get your bench from 100-200lbs would take more time. Lets say 5 months? (20lbs/month is quite a bit) I think over that time the guy doing 100lbs over and over would have really stopped gaining anything from the exercise. However, the guy that has increased slowly would have put some mass.

Just my thoughts.

IronWorker

[Ross86]

Yes, but for an untrained person two months is a LONG time.

[Eric3237]

I don't understand exactly. Are you saying that subject one is basically doing the same thing over and over with no sort of progressive overload? And subject two is increasing load? Like 0311 said, diminished returns, and even if stimulus is increased in some way while maintaing load you still get diminished returns over time, in terms of growth.

There are so many many factors that will determine who will grow the most. The type of hypertrophy. Whether the strength gains of subject two are largely neural in nature, etc. But just with what you've presented subject two has the best chance for growth. You need some type of progression. Otherwise there is no new adaptation. Subject one will just be maintaining strength and in order to get any kind of new growth he will have to increase reps, sets, decrease time, slow down the reps maybe (limited impact)...something.

If someone does the same thing for a month and SEEMS to continue growing it is not because of the workout it is because of residual growth from the increased recovery. I call it rebound growth.

Honestly, there are is no way to really know. You can't just some everything up in a general way because it comes down to individual trainees and their status. BUT in general, you want to keep growing you need to increase the load at some point. As far as the growth rate it comes down to progress and grow and worrying about rate of growth is a completely pointless endeavor, imo.

[Joker13]

I'm just sorta trying to figure, how fast your muscles can grow. There has to be a upper limit, reguardless of how much stimulation

[Eric3237]

Oh, definitely.

I guess that would be determined by the ceiling of protein synthesis and different people will have higher or lower set points. Optimal nutrition and protein amounts will ensure that protein synthesis is maintained at it's upper most level (ceteris paribus ) and I reckon that no amount of stimulus and/or caloric/protein intake above a certain amount will increase protein synthesis past a certain limit. But each person is different. The only way to really increase it is...you guessed it...gear.

But it's a bad idea to try to plan training by the appearance or lack of growth, if that is what you're getting at, at least for the average natural trainee. Growth is slow and nebulous.