Pseudoscience and Bodybuilding

Haven't posted in a while (moved house etc) but today I felt the need to have a rant about one of my pet interests, building muscle. I should say from the outset, that from my own perspective this is about being a little less skinny rather than the world of competitive bodybuilding, however most people agree the principles should be the same.

Having a scientific background, I have to say that I have rarely come across subjects that have been more prone to junk-science and hearsay than that of exercise and its effects on the human body.

Ever since our ancestors jumped down from the trees it seems men and women have been exercising to 'better' their physiques. Today most cultures identify an ideal male physique as having appreciable muscle mass, and low body fat. Female 'ideal' physiques are often portrayed as slim, and low in fat (not usually to the extent of males). There are cultural variations of course, particularly in the cases where body fat is seen as a sign of wealth and good food supply.

'ideal' spartan physiques

Anyway, with all this time available, and people exercising at least since the times of the ancient greeks, you would have thought we would have come upon some general principles as to the best way to change our bodies through exercise and diet. Perhaps the most telling thing in exercise 'science' is that we have NOT come up with undisputed easily testable methods for changing our physiques.

This alone should tell us something : Perhaps because of the multitude of factors involved in an exercise program (diet, rest, training frequency and type) it is hard to pin down what factors or combinations of factors are responsible for success. Or, alternatively, perhaps once a successful formula has been found, the body quickly adapts to it and ceases to respond. Another possible alternative: perhaps which formula will be successful depends on the prior exercise regime (whatever the body is used to already).

The 'elephant in the room' with exercise science is that there are large numbers of people trying their hardest but making no significant progress. If anyone had 'pinned down' the perfect formula, you would think the idea would spread and everyone would be using it, except for those experimenting.

The multitude of factors undoubtedly involved in the success or failure of a program make it hard to conduct and draw conclusions from scientific experiments. Usually in science you try to keep all factors the same except one, vary this and then try and interpret the result. In bodybuilding the result should be muscle size (increase or stay same or decrease). This in itself can be hard to measure, and instead many studies measure 'strength', which is a bit vague and makes things hard to interpret. Unfortunately aside from lab rats, it is difficult to control for factors such as subjects diet, sleep, hormones, existing adaptation to exercise, let alone the problems with standardizing the 'effort' involved in the exercise program under test.

a lab rat

All this difficulty in devising useful valid scientific studies has led to an explosion in pseudoscience, and conclusions based on belief rather than solid science. For instance, often one influential person (say a Mr Olympia or something, e.g. Mike Mentzer or Arnold) will write about what they believe worked for them at some particular time, and many people will believe this with an almost religious-fervour.

However, this is highly unscientific. For a start, the sample size is often 1, which is not very scientific, and it makes it hard to pin down the reasons for success or gains. Was it really 'high intensity' training that was responsible for gains? Or was the individual eating more calories, or using a successful combination of steroids at the same time? It is hard to say without doing a proper replicated study.

This also brings up another of the problems with the pseudoscience going around. The ideas that get circulated around the most tend to come from the biggest guys, the guys with the biggest muscles. Almost by definition, these guys will also be taking numerous chemical aids (steroids, and now insulin, growth hormone etc). Not to mention they are also likely to have unusually good genes for muscle gain (low levels of myostatin for example). And what works under these particular hormonal environments may be completely different to what works for joe average training in his local gym with no chemicals to help. In fact the top guys regimes may be equally likely to destroy joe average body rather than build it up.


On the other side of the coin, many people preach the opposite, that 'everybody is different', and that we are all unique. Well yes we are, but it seems likely that muscle is pretty similar in all people aside from a few standard variations (relative numbers of fiber types, a few variations in proteins), and of course the hormone environment. In fact as far as I know skeletal muscle is pretty similar in different animals, so there is no reason to believe it should vary vastly in different people.

The truth probably lies somewhere in between the two schools of thought.


In my opinion, one of the biggest reasons to be sceptical of applying advise from steroid etc assisted subjects to 'normal people' is that the process of training and building muscle seems to be a delicate balance in the muscle between catabolism (breaking down) and anabolism (building up). The process of training itself seems to be catabolic, to different extents depending on the intensity / volume etc of the workout, so the anabolic stimulus of the workout has to be enough to regain what was lost just to break even! Steroids and other 'aids' may act by altering this balance. If they, hypothetically, turned off catabolism, but had no effect on anabolism, then the subject could train as hard and as often as they liked without having to worry about break down of the muscle. Only growth would result. Applying this same program to a natural trainer and the catabolism could easily overpower the anabolism.


How can we measure the muscle?

This seems to have caused enormous problems in studies and I am not clear why. Perhaps it is because the size of a muscle can vary with extraneous factors, such as perhaps hydration, glycogen contents etc. Strength (1 rep max) has in many cases been used instead as an indirect measure. The problem with this is you are then studying how to increase strength rather than size, which is not necessarily the same thing (particularly over the short term that these studies take place over). Instead I propose simply measuring either the upper arm or thigh may be a better measure. I have not yet tried the thigh but the upper arm seems fairly consistent and easy to measure progress.


With any measurement it is important to standardize as much as possible. I have used the standard method of wrapping the tape measure round the arm at the widest point when the biceps is tensed. It is important to note this cannot be standardized at all times : particularly during the workout, the arm will fill with blood (the pump) and vary by around half an inch depending on the workout. Also the rest of the day after a workout it will often be reduced by 1/8 inch or so. In addition it also seems to increase by 1/16 to 1/8 inch immediately if taken upon waking in the morning. Other than these times it seems a reasonable measure.

As many different exercise groups indirectly exercise the arms, the best way to examine the effects of exercise on these muscles is probably to exercise them for a period to the exclusion of the rest of the body. And to maximize the changes observed and simplify things, it may also be a good idea to exercise the biceps and triceps in the same workout.

When following this protocol, I found that a good arm workout usually will add 1/16 to 1/8 inch to the arms. If you find after a couple of days the arm is the same size or smaller, then the exercise program is not working .. i.e. the catabolic effect is overriding any anabolic effect.

When you take measurements of this sort, you will also recognise that going without food can immediately result in a loss of size. If skipping breakfast can take away all your gains from a hard workout it teaches you to be consistent with your diet.

Finally, after all this am I going to recommend an exercise / diet program? To break with tradition in the exercise world I'm going to answer by saying

'I DON'T KNOW what the best exercise / diet program is'.

After all, it is the beginning of wisdom to say 'I don't know'. But I will say that if you take measurements such as I have described, you will be able to recognise when something you are doing is working, or not. After all, if it is not working, you need to change something: one definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results.