Musclegate: The New Science of Gaining Muscle Faster (eBook)

INTRODUCTION

The Watergate scandal was one of the biggest political scandals of the early 1970s. This political cover-up led to the resignation of Richard Nixon, but the – gate scandal did not end there. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the use of the suffix – gate, “referring to a scandal or a cover-up.” The – gate scandals have been ongoing, such as Irangate, Bridgegate, Climategate, and the most recent sports-related scandal, Spygate and Deflategate. Hundreds of new exercises are posted on social media and fitness websites every day, claiming these exercises build muscle faster than traditional exercise. As a result of the misinformation and social media spreading articles and videos with no scientific credibility at an unprecedented rate, many athletes and fitness enthusiasts can lose months or even years of progress following a resistance training program. The MuscleGate scandal of exercises that promise to build muscle faster is growing at an exceedingly rapid rate. For example, a traditional standing biceps curl is not enough to grow bigger biceps with today’s social media. I once saw a guy on Instagram standing on one leg doing a bicep curl, stating that it was more effective than traditional biceps curls. Based on what research is this coming from?

People believe that if an exercise is harder to perform, it must be better! Another workout trend for getting better results is balance board training. Balance board training involves performing an exercise on an unstable surface, which proponents claim results in greater muscle activation and greater increases in muscle mass. One study found a decrease in force production by 60% in exercises in the bench press when performed on a stability ball.1 Performing exercises on a stability ball can diminish the tension placed on the muscle, leading to a subpar increase in muscle growth. Instability exercises emphasize core strength. They can be used for general fitness and may be helpful during periods of recovery and recuperation. Still, instability ball training is inferior to traditional resistance exercise for increasing strength or muscle mass.2 Instability ball training is not recommended for hypertrophy (i.e., muscle growth) or strength training because it does not provide a sufficient stimulus to induce muscle growth. Muscle growth is the process of progressively increasing muscle tension.

Social media influencers and major news outlets have a major impact on people exercising and buying sports nutrition supplements. Each week, articles are posted about how Hollywood actors got in shape for their roles in the movies, such as “How Chris Hemsworth Got Ripped to Play Thor.” This has led to the mentality to copy celebrities’ routines on social media to build muscle. This often leads to a body dysmorphia of regular gym-goers into an unrealistic expectation of how they should look. A recent study of regular gym participants found a negative relationship between comparing others’ physiques on social media and their own body image. This led to greater body dissatisfaction and the use of dietary supplements (i.e., protein, creatine, pre-workouts, etc.) and anabolic steroid use. The study found that 65% of the participants use the internet, and 32% use social media as their primary source of information on dietary supplements.3

There are hundreds of exercise programs that claim to build muscle faster. This has led to mass confusion about the best way to build muscle. Should I use short rest periods? Should I train with more or fewer sets? This has led to “program jumping.” A person is jumping to the newest workout fad every week to gain muscle. One week its SuperSets, then its high-intensity training, and then its high-volume training. It’s overwhelming to find the right answer. It’s not uncommon to see fitness magazines on the grocery store counter with titles such as “Gain an Inch on Your Biceps in Four-weeks!” and “Build a Chest like The Rock!” leading to unrealistic expectations about how much muscle you can gain from a program.

Some people are still doing fasted cardio in the morning to burn more body fat, based on a book that is a decade old. A 2017 study of the literature found no evidence of fasted cardio for reducing body fat or changes in body fat.4 Meaningful weight loss and fat loss are achieved by caloric restriction, not fasted cardio. The title MUSCLEGATE is a term I find perfect for the fitness industry because there is so much misinformation and scandals about building muscle. Please take a moment to think of the millions of dollars made from such fitness products with zero science to support their claims, such as the Shake Weight, Thighmaster, Vibro-Belt, The Slim Suit, and the Body Blade. There is a multi-million-dollar industry for females wearing waist slimmer’s (i.e., an elastic compression that compresses the abdomen) to give an hourglass figure. Not only are these not effective, but they can also weaken abdominal muscles, compress internal organs, reduce blood flow (i.e., blood flow decreased to fingertips by ~36%), and lead to reduce breathing.5,6

THE MUSCLE GROWTH VORTEX OF CONFUSION

If you think about the amount of misinformation in the fitness industry, it is staggering! Here is a shortlist of things advocated to get in shape faster:

• Don’t want to diet? You can get shredded abs with the six-pack abs stimulator in which you stick electrodes on your stomach and have the machine stimulate the muscles to contract. Unfortunately, despite these products still being sold today, they don’t work!
• A 2005 study found that 12 weeks of abdominal stimulation (i.e., ab contracting device) in track and field athletes found no changes in abdominal oblique muscles or subcutaneous fat thickness in the ab-stimulating groups or control groups after the intervention period.7
• The dumbbell pullover in which you lie on a bench has been advocated as a chest exercise to “stretch the ribcage” and give a lifter a bigger chest. Today, we know that the dumbbell pullover is a poor activator of the chest muscles compared to the bench press. The dumbbell and barbell pullover results in greater activation of the lats and triceps and cannot be recommended as a complementary exercise for the chest.8
• Many people will often imply that because an exercise has greater muscle “activation,” it leads to greater muscle growth. Using muscle activation cannot be used to imply greater muscle growth.9 A perfect example of this is hamstring activation increases during a squat (i.e., 30.24%). However, yet little muscle growth of the hamstrings occurs during squats.10

The list goes on and on for exercises that were once thought to build muscle but have now been debunked.

THE “MEATHEAD” YEARS

A “meathead” is described in the Urban Dictionary as “An enormously muscular guy who cannot hold a conversation about anything other than weightlifting and protein shakes.” Yes, I considered myself a ‘meathead’ since I was a teenager and picked up my first bodybuilding magazine. Sadly, I was not an enormously muscular guy, but my life revolved around protein shakes, bodybuilding magazines, and the latest exercise routine to build muscle. I would read the bodybuilding magazines each month to learn the latest exercise techniques to build muscle. I tried to mimic the routines of great bodybuilders such as Arnold Schwarzenegger. I tried Supersets, Drop Sets, 100 rep set, German Volume Training, SuperSlow, Muscle Confusion, Giant Sets, Instinctive Training, adding more sets, changing reps, training more frequently, eccentric exercise, and just about any other new training principle that promised more muscle growth. I jumped from program to program, trying to find the “secret program” that all the jacked bodybuilders were using. I would pick up FLEX and Muscle and Fitness; each magazine article had some huge guy screaming in pain, with some insane weight that they were using. Based on what I read every month, you had to train your ass off and annihilate every muscle group if you wanted to gain muscle. I believed the pros used some “secret” training system to get results. They were bigger than everyone else because they were training harder.

My training was not enough based on my poor results, so I started using all the latest muscle-building supplements in the magazines and spent thousands of dollars on these ingredients, now debunked by science. Some of the embarrassing things I did to attempt to gain muscle were:

• Drinking 5000 calorie mass-building shakes.
• Training twice a day because I read that exercise-induced increases in anabolic hormones produced during exercise were the key to muscle growth.
• Performing 100 rep squats to shock muscles into growth.
• Getting up in the middle of the night to drink a protein shake to stay “anabolic.”
• Placed electrodes on various body parts to stimulate muscle...