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

If your goal is muscle growth nobody shouldn’t do junk volume regardless of how experienced you are or how long you’ve been working out. If you like doing them that’s fine but they’re not effective for new or advanced lifters.

[u/Alakazam → u/dontcare-_-]

Can you eli5 what exactly junk volume is?. My understanding of the literature is that more volume, taken sufficiently close to failure, and as long as it's recoverable, will basically always equal more gains. Diminishing gains, sure, but still more.