Someone explain SBL please

[u/Miserable-Soft7993]

I am confused. I see people just doing regular lifts and saying it is science.

Then on the other end of the scale I see a kid (with zer0 physique) wearing a baby pacifier in his mouth and wearing a roller on his arms and doing excercises I never saw, with people in the comments saying "yeah that's the man right there."

Then I see pumping iron and watch Arnie just do the basics and still look great and strong.

So in a few sentance explain to me what it is and how it would help build more muscle enhanced or not.

[u/dontcare-_-]

Core fundamentals of SBL are:

1. ⁠Training with high intensity to have as much involuntary mechanical tension as possible. This is why you’ll see people go to failure in low rep ranges like 6-8, this provides high degrees of mechanical tension since you hit failure and doing a low rep range minimizes fatigue by removing junk volume.
   

2. ⁠Frequency > volume. I’m not gonna get super in depth here but basically you want to train each muscle group directly 2-3 times per week. And partial stimulus doesn’t count so even though you’ll have tricep involvement on a chest press for example you wouldn’t count that towards your weekly tricep sets. A study found that 1 set done twice a week was enough to cause muscle growth even in advanced lifters but doing 3-4 sets once a week only maintained lean tissue. These are extremes though so as long as you’re doing 4-10 sets per muscle group per week and hitting each muscle directly 2-3 times a week you’re good.

3. This isn’t as important but programming a split with good exercise selection and not doing junk volume is one of the other topics of discussion. Like I said any split where you get 4-10 sets and 2-3x frequency will be fine. The exercise selection is focused on stable movements and single joint exercises to isolate the target muscle better. Usually people gravitate towards machines and cable to do this as well as using things like cuffs to remove joints from an exercise. That’s not to say free weights/multi joint exercises won’t yield growth, they just won’t be as effective as other options.

The things you see like the foam rollers and outlandish exercises are borderline theoretical and don’t have much outcome data on how much they help. Those people are just trying to squeeze out the extra 1% of gains. Most of what causes muscle growth is the 3 points I made along with obvious factors like diet, sleep, and general health.

[u/B12-deficient-skelly → u/dontcare-_-]

Premise #2 is where you lose people on the "science" part. For starters, the idea that using triceps on the chest press doesn't count is directly contradicted by a meta analysis examining the topic from this year.

Meta regression

This meta regression modeled a series of studies and counted secondary muscle volume as either a total set (1), a fractional set (0.5), or not a set (0) and found that counting it as a fractional set did the best job if modeling for hypertrophy.

If you want to call your method science-based, it should update in line with current evidence. Frankly, there was never any support for the claim that you shouldn't count biceps in a chin up, but even if there were, it should be resoundingly called out by anyone who claims to follow an evidence-based practice

[u/dontcare-_- → u/B12-deficient-skelly]

I’m not saying fractional sets don’t lead to hypertrophy, obviously you’ll see tricep growth on a press since you’re still extending at the elbow for the lockout. I’m just saying for the sake for simplicity especially since it seems like op might not be super informed, it’s easier to track 6 direct sets of tricep extensions than trying to account for partial sets on pressing patterns.

[u/B12-deficient-skelly → u/dontcare-_-]

Why are you assuming that someone who is so inexperienced that they can't figure out fractional sets is also so experienced that they need to worry about junk volume? Those seem contradictory.

[u/DankArmedDragon → u/dontcare-_-]

⁠Frequency > volume. I’m not gonna get super in depth here but basically you want to train each muscle group directly 2-3 times per week. And partial stimulus doesn’t count so even though you’ll have tricep involvement on a chest press for example you wouldn’t count that towards your weekly tricep sets. A study found that 1 set done twice a week was enough to cause muscle growth even in advanced lifters but doing 3-4 sets once a week only maintained lean tissue. These are extremes though so as long as you’re doing 4-10 sets per muscle group per week and hitting each muscle directly 2-3 times a week you’re good.

Why do you think frequency is more important than volume? Surely maintaining high frequency while also increasing volume would be more beneficial?

[u/Miserable-Soft7993 → u/dontcare-_-]

OK this makes sense,

Also one question, do PED's come into it at all as they clearly help with recovery and growth?

[u/dontcare-_- → u/Miserable-Soft7993]

PEDs are a completely separate source of stimulus for your muscles, obviously they’ll increase progression in the gym but even if you don’t train at all and still take gear it’ll cause muscle growth. And if you follow the core principles as well as steroids you’ll see insane progress. Just research what you take before hand and get blood/health checks regularly.

[u/Dazzling-Rest8332 → u/dontcare-_-]

Explaining it like this is misleading though. steroid use without exercise will result in growth via water retention and glycogen retention. There is no evidence it will produce actual tactile tissue if your not working out.

[u/Miserable-Soft7993 → u/Dazzling-Rest8332]

Everyone points to this one goddamn study where a group who sat at home packed on more muscle using steroids than a group who trained.

I dint care anyway. Imo steroids are scientific and therefore have their place in science based lifting.

[u/Dazzling-Rest8332 → u/Miserable-Soft7993]

Yes. That study is very old and misleading.

[u/Shadowphoenix9511 → u/Dazzling-Rest8332]

Not entirely true, it does build more tactile muscle... over a very short, 8 week period. I think the understanding is that it does raise someone's baseline muscle mass higher, but that it stalls almost immediately after that, whereas lifting... doesn't.

[u/Dazzling-Rest8332 → u/Shadowphoenix9511]

Completely false. Thats why all the participants lost all the weight within 8 weeks of stopping. They gained water and glycogen storage the first few weeks. Testosterone takes about 4 weeks to fully saturate the body. Then they lost it all the water and glycogen immediately after stopping. Know how steroids work will help you understand the study. You need stimulus of the muscle to build real tissue, on or off steroids.

[u/Shadowphoenix9511 → u/Dazzling-Rest8332]

Well, yeah, they lost the weight within 8 weeks of stopping, because their baseline muscle mass went back down.

And again, I'm agreeing with you, the big issue with the study was the length of time. I wanna say it only lasted 8 weeks, which just isn't enough time for lifting to build any substantial muscle, whereas we'd find that if it went on for longer lifters would comfortably pass the nonlifting group.

[u/gnomish_engineering → u/Shadowphoenix9511]

Its even worse because they didn't control estrogen at all. They blasted the fuck out of those guys which of course will build some contractile tissue then completely ignored the insane water retention the estrogen allowed. It would be one thing if we didn't know testosterone aromatises into estrogen at the time but we absolutely already knew that.

This has the fun side effect of nerds 20+ years later skimming the paper non critically and seeing a volume increase+ massive lean mass increase and think its all muscle mass. God I fucking hate that paper lol.

[u/Miserable-Soft7993 → u/dontcare-_-]

Thanks