2961: 5 Things Research Gets Wrong About Building Muscle

Sal Di Stefano (0:00)

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump, Mind Pump with your hosts, Sal Di Stefano, Adam Schafer and Justin Andrews.

Adam Schafer (0:13)

You just found the most downloaded health, fitness and entertainment podcast in history approaching over half a billion downloads. This is Mind Pump in today's episode. We had callers call in, ask us questions about their health and fitness. We had to help them live on air. This was after the intro though. The intro is about 52 minutes long.

Now in the intro, we talk about muscle growth and fat loss and diet. We talk about current events and family life. It's always fun. Look, if you want to be on an episode like this, submit your question to mplifecaller.com. This episode is brought to you by a sponsor, Kion. Kion makes high quality supplements for muscle building, fat loss and athletic performance. Today we talked about their essential amino acid supplement. Using these, especially when you're cutting, will help you preserve muscle. Now, using when you're trying to build muscle in a surplus will help you build even more muscle. They're inexpensive and very effective and Kion's amino acids have the right amount of leucine that the studies show make a big difference. Go try them out. Go to getkion.com. That's getkion.com/mindpump.

That link will get you 20% off. We also have a brand new workout program, Maps, Abs and Butt. Now, this is a full body workout program, but the emphasis is on developing your abs and getting a nice round butt. Because it's a new program, it's 40% off. And if you get it right now, I will throw in Muscle Mommy 15 or Muscle Mommy. It's another workout program. Plus, I'll throw in a diet guide. Go to mapsabsandbutt.com and use the code LAUNCH for the discount and the free stuff. Back to the show.

Justin Andrews (1:45)

T-shirt time.

Doug Egge (1:46)

And it's t-shirt time.

Justin Andrews (1:49)

Oh, shit, Doug, you know it's my favorite time of the week.

Doug Egge (1:52)

Two winners this week, one for Apple Podcast, one for Facebook, the Apple Podcast winner is The Life Changer. And for Facebook, we have Jay Jacob Whittaker.

Both of you are winners. Send a name I just read to iTunes at mindpumpmedia.com. Include your shirt size and your shipping address, and we'll get that shirt right out to you.

Justin Andrews (2:10)

All right, real quick, if you love us like we love you, why not show it by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpumpstore.com? I'm talking right now. Hit pause, head on over to mindpumpstore.com.

That's it, enjoy the rest of the show.

Adam Schafer (2:26)

A huge meta-analysis of many, many studies. Over 30,000 participants across all the studies has just told us all the rules for hypertrophy, for muscle growth. This is what makes your muscles grow. Here's the deal, they're wrong. I'm serious, they're wrong. We're gonna break it down right now why they're wrong and what you could do to get your body to respond. Let's get to it.

SPEAKER_6 (2:50)

Wait a second, tell me in here. Studies?

Adam Schafer (2:52)

So this is new? So yeah, huge meta-analysis. First off, I wanna say this first.

Justin Andrews (2:57)

By the way, that's supposed to be one of the best.

Adam Schafer (3:00)

Yeah, so meta-analysis is when they take lots of studies and study the studies and try to find commonalities, which those are like the gold standard of studies.

And I wanna say this, I think studies on fitness are super valuable. I'm definitely not one of those guys that's like, who cares what the study says type of deal. They're super, super valuable. But that being said, we have to understand the context. We have to understand how, if this applies and how it may apply to the average person that's listening right now.

And that makes a big difference. So first off, let me just kind of explain what these studies look like. The vast majority of studies on strength training, the vast majority, including the ones that were in this study right here, are typically between, on average, about 12 weeks long, usually about 8 weeks long. Okay, so you're looking at studies that are over 2 to 3 months on average, because that's how long these studies are done for. You're also looking at an average amount of participants in the study, looking like around between 10 to 20 So about 10 to 20 people are in these studies. Now some of them have more people, but on average most of these studies that were considered for this meta-analysis or that are generally peer-reviewed and people say they are good.