-: In this section we're gonna talk about
the hypertrophy adaptations
that you guys can achieve with training.
But probably the most important thing to understand
abut hypertrophy is there are so many more ways
to turn it off than there are to turn it on.
And that's why I've brought up this
confusogram, if you will,
to kind of demonstrate that.
So this is an example of some, just some,
of the biochemical pathways that can lead
to the different aspects of hypertrophy, protein synthesis,
growth factor signaling, and all of that.
And what you'll notice is there's just this loop of circles
going around with green and red.
All of these red things are stops.
So, when it comes to gaining muscle
there are so many conditions that
are going to need to be necessary for you to go through that
that often times, the issue is not
did I stimulate hypertrophy?
It's whether or not that stimulus was able to actually
carry through all the way to adaptation.
So when it comes to hypertrophy training
most people are sabotaging their gains, their results
by either not having the right nutrition,
not having the program designed specific enough,
or simply just having different things misaligned
in their system from a nutrient to timing perspective,
whatever it may be.
Or that there's obstacles in the way of that stimulus
actually becoming the adaptation that is gonna lead to
the muscle mass that we are seeking.
If we look at this,
just to give you kind of a brief overview,
knowing everything on this chart is not gonna make you
better at program design.
But understanding the base foundation of
there's lots of different ways to hypertrophy.
At the center here, we have the popular protein MTOR.
This is basically your nutritional regulator
of whether or not we have the resources available
to do hypertrophy.
So a lot of the adaptation processes
are going to revolve around whether or not that thing
is sensing, do we have enough nutrition or not?
Other things that we're gonna have are extracellular signals
like growth factors and hormones and all these things.
So, we have different things coming from outside the cell
that are gonna impact the signal.
We have signals that are gonna go from within the cell,
both biochemical and the result of tension,
a lot of things going on.
So, a lot of ways to come in
and maybe for every way coming in,
there's a multitude of ways for that system to be shut off.
It's like having a whole bunch of checks and balances
on whether or not we can go through this system.
And perhaps the most important one
in terms of training and nutrition perspective,
is going to be this energy balance
is do I actually have the resources to do hypertrophy?
You need repeated permission.
Multiple steps, multiple checkpoints in order
to actually carry from stimulus all the way to adaptation.
A huge portion of that is going to be
do I have the fuel to run the protein synthesis
or to change the cells' metabolism
towards a hypertrophy goal?
If you are training and you're depleting the cell of energy
its main goal is going to be getting energy back.
So we just talked about the metabolic phase.
That was driven mostly by AMPK.
That sensor of what is the energy status of the cell?
That is gonna be counter-regulatory to MTOR,
which is going to be our energy sensor for
can we do protein synthesis,
can we move forward and do anything in the hypertrophy
realm in terms of adaptations?
So these two are opposing.
Only one will be on at a time.
Now what I will say, just to be very clear,
you don't have one AMPK and one MTOR,
again we have these things in multitudes
so it's not like a light switch on or off.
These things exist in somewhat of a magnitude.
But in terms of which mode your cells are gonna be in,
it functions a little bit more like a light switch.
You either have the nutrients to have enough MTOR on
to really run protein synthesis, or you don't.
In terms of what we're looking for.
Our goal isn't just to do a little repair,
our goal is to make progress.
And if we're gonna make progress,
there needs to be a significant shift in which one of these
we happen to be stimulating at that point in time.
Energy status is most important
because we can control that with nutrition,
we can control that with nutrient timing,
we can control that with the type of training
that we're doing, how demanding it is,
what we're providing within that training
from fuel sources to amino acids and whatnot.
So that's gonna be one of the switches
that you have the most direct control over.
There's gonna be certain things where
you're not gonna have as much control over that outcome
but this one you should be able to control with nutrition
and proper program design pretty readily.
Another thing that I will say here is that
this tends to be one where people try and double dip.
You hear a lot of people like, "oh, can you burn fat
"and build muscle at the same time?"
Well, if we're looking at it in this perspective of
one of these two is on and one of these two is off
in a super deficit position,
like energy deficit, no you can't.
Because you need a certain amount of fuel
to be able to run this.
But we will look into that complexive idea of re-composition
and how you can do that.
It's just getting into the right mindset of,
what does at the same time actually mean?
And what are the conditions where
hypertrophy training could actually cause me
to be burning more body fat simultaneously?
But a lot of things have to be in order
in order for that to happen.
So people that don't have that nutrition dialed in
aren't training well,
or are not very trainable in these systems
are gonna find that this thing
seems to be impossible to achieve.
I'll argue it's not impossible, its just difficult
as you become more adapted to training
because you need to have more variables,
more of these checks and balances in agreement
in order for this to happen and you can't get greedy.
So if you're gonna try and do two things at once,
you can't expect to be gaining the maximum amount of muscle
and losing the maximum amount of fat simultaneously.
So you have to not take things to extremes.
You have to take things to the appropriate threshold
for their stimulus for whatever's trainable,
and then you'll see that you can kind of double dip
if that is the actual outcome you are looking for.
So, let's move forward.
Getting to that hypertrophy stimulus.
What is going to need to happen?
There's all of these roadblocks
that we're gonna have to overcome.
One of the top ones here is gonna be inflammation.
So, inflammation is the opposite of hypertrophy.
Inflammation is the breaking down.
Very important.
So if you're training and we do muscle damage,
we need inflammation to come in and clear out broken stuff.
We need it to break down the fats
that were damaged by oxidative stress.
We need it to break down proteins that were damaged
by oxidation or mechanical stress.
That stuff needs to occur and it's an important part
of signaling for some of the hypertrophy mechanisms
that we will get into later.
Low ATP is another one that we have to overcome.
Inflammation can be a consumer of ATP.
It takes energy to run inflammation.
So if cells are inflamed,
you kind of have two things going on.
One, you have this inflammatory process
that is going to inhibit any hypertrophy signalings
because you're not gonna be breaking down
and building up simultaneously.
And then you have that energy imbalance issue.
And with inflammation we have kind of two issues
with the ATP thing.
We have inflammation consuming ATP to do its job,
but another thing that happens with inflammation ...
We talked a little bit about this in the metabolic phase,
is inflammation tends to be anti-nutrient partitioning
in that, if its cell is inflamed,
it's going to kind of deny things coming into it
and that includes amino acids and glucose
that we are going to need
to switch over to this hypertrophy phase.
So its going to delay the time that it takes us
to be able to facilitate these adaptations.
Even if we had the stimulus,
if it was too depleting or too inflammatory,
its gonna take longer before we can switch over
into doing hypertrophy.
And if you guys have been following any research
or just methodology in terms of hypertrophy,
there's all this talk about the anabolic window
and stuff like that where hormones ...
There is something to be said that
when we train, we are creating a conducive state where,
if we are able to take advantage of that
from a hormonal perspective, from a blood flow
and a nutrient perspective,
that's an opportune time to do repair.
If we exceed the depletion or the inflammation needed
to get that stimulus,
we are going to miss out on some of that
quote unquote anabolic window
because we are gonna have to correct these things
and that's gonna take more time.
So, we're gonna lose some of that opportunity for
highest rate of adaptation from hypertrophy.
Increased AMPK.
Obviously, these things go together.
We talked about that in metabolic phase.
When ATP is low, AMPK is high.
So when you're looking at being specific
with your program design,
you can see how doing something that was a sought out goal
for the metabolic phase may actually be counterproductive
if my main goal is hypertrophy, at least in that moment.
So we'll get into periodizing those things
after we've been through all of the stimuli.
But if that is still elevated because ATP is still low,
or glycogen levels are still very low,
which is getting into that next one,
then MTOR is not gonna turn on.
That nutrient sensor is gonna say
"hey, we shouldn't do this."
You can't go and get a loan from the bank to build a house
if you have no equity, you have nothing.
No contractor is going to say, "yeah, sure.
"Let's start working on this project. You got $10?
"Cool. Let's build you a two million dollar home."
You need to have that cash in the bank in order to say
hey, we can afford to run this construction process.
We're not gonna get halfway done and run out of money
and then be screwed.
That's why there's so many of these checks and balances.
If I'm gonna make this big investment
from an amino acid standpoint, from an energy standpoint,
fat and glucose and ATP,
well then I need to make sure that I have enough
to take this process to completion.
Because having half done hypertrophy does the cell no good.
It's gonna make it more dysfunctional than anything.
More likely to just get damaged again
when it goes through another training session.
So, amino acids which I just briefly mentioned
are the last thing in terms of that energy balance.
So, we have inflammation affecting energy balance
because it's gonna affect nutrients coming in
and then we have how well have I replenished this?
Now, sneak peak of this periodization thing.
You see all of this energy stuff is very important
for switching over to hypertrophy.
Do you maybe, if you start turning the wheels in your head,
think that, if my cells are better at producing energy,
I have healthier mitochondria,
I have better glucose transport,
from, maybe say, doing a metabolic period
where I was focusing on AMPK or symbolum oxidative stress
to get mitochondrial biogenesis.
If I'm able to restore this faster, do you not see that
that may be beneficial when my goal is hypertrophy
to have that really well balanced energy system
that can get ATP back up, that can bring AMP back down fast
because energy is restored.
They can get glucose into that cell
and replenish that glycogen fast,
that can produce plenty of antioxidants
to limit inflammation in training.
Then amino acids, obviously that's gonna come from diet.
But from being very conditioned metabolically,
it makes us better at being able to switch over
to hypertrophy.
Which is why when we get into periodization,
we're gonna talk about how all these things
can potentiate the benefits of other.
So, you should utilize all of these training phases.
When we look at the stress from hypertrophy workouts,
it's pretty broad.
When we think of hypertrophy training,
we tend to associate it with volume.
And if we have volume,
we're gonna stress a multitude of systems.
So, electrolytes, oxidation are all going to be
taxed a little bit, just not to the varying degree.
So, we've looked at this chart in the metabolic phase,
we saw that there was some glaringly red things
in some of the metabolic areas and then
the mechanical damage and stuff like that
was relatively green.
Whereas here, we kind of have, like the whole chart
is kind of like this red-orangey area
because everything is getting taxed a little bit.
Really what it's gonna come down to is,
where in the spectrum of different types
of hypertrophy methods are you doing?
And what is the volume of that stimulus
that you happen to need, that is gonna kind of bias this
either more towards the metabolic or more towards
the inflammatory stimuli on here?
You're gonna have some oxidative stress,
you're gonna have some electrolytes being depleted,
but at a minimal level.
Basically, what you should take away from this
is if you are well conditioned metabolically,
then the metabolic things on here should be
below a threshold where they are becoming the main stress.
And the main stresses instead should be the tissue damage.
Or it should be, maybe this inflammatory method,
if we're doing a lot of muscle damage,
that being oxidative or from the mechanical caring.
Lactic acid, how much of that's produced is gonna depend
again, on the hypertrophy method that we choose
and whether or not we're going for sarcoplasmic or
myofibrillar-based hypertrophy.
Neurotransmitters, as we get into more, say,
a lower rep, higher volume hypertrophy method where
we're using a lot of heavy loads, maybe focusing more on
eccentric damage or whatnot,
then those neurotransmitters may be getting depleted some,
but not as much as they're gonna be depleted
in the neurological phase coming up.
So, this is gonna be very volume-dependent
and where in that continuum of different ways of
stimulating hypertrophy that I happen to choose.
Because I can do a little bit higher rep
or more dense hypertrophy work
and I can do some heavier, more damaging
mechanically hypertrophy work
and that's gonna kind of shift where in the spectrum.
When we get to this glycogen depletion thing.
Well, that's again gonna be a concept of density and
volume of that and what fuel sources am I burning through
and it's also going to be dependent
on my intra-workout nutrition.
So when we get into those,
if one of those things that I need for hypertrophy
to jump in and I know that there's gonna be
a significant amount of glycogen depletion
if I have high volume work.
Even if it's not extremely metabolic
because I'm kind of working in that area where
carbohydrate is still the dominant fuel source,
I'm just not burning it as fast
as I was in the metabolic phase.
It's still gonna be very important for me
to have carbohydrates if I want the hypertrophy adaptations
to start kicking in as soon as possible.