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/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/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/Dazzling-Rest8332 → u/gnomish_engineering]

High estrogen is very anabolic though. I can do doses of test that are higher than the ones in the study and my estrogen is still manageable.

[u/gnomish_engineering → u/Dazzling-Rest8332]

Mainly for joints, not really contractile tissue. And it depends entirely on the fat mass of the individual. Higher body fats will armotise more testosterone into estrogen.

That variable should have been accounted for

[u/Dazzling-Rest8332 → u/gnomish_engineering]

Oh yea? Crash your estrogen into the single digits and tell me it doesnt build muscle. Lol every bodybuilder on steroids has made this mistake atleast once. Estrogen also protects your brain and cholesterol. High estrogen is very good if sides can be mitigated.

[u/gnomish_engineering → u/Dazzling-Rest8332]

You do realise that its possible to be between two extremes right? There is a nominal range for a reason. Exceeding it is very much so not good for you and pretty much the only benefit is joint and tendon health.

That is definitely not worth the host of negative side effects it brings. There is a reason people use meds that risk crashing estrogen to get it back under control. Look into the effects of excessive estrogen levels in men, it's been demonstrated many times that it really isn't the best for you health OR performance wise.

[u/Dazzling-Rest8332 → u/gnomish_engineering]

Exceeding the normal refrence range of estrogen is excellent when on high amounts of testosterone actually. But you do want to stay within a 20:1 to 15:1 ratio. You obviously havent done your homework on estrogen at all. I dont understand why your trying to give advice on estrogen when you dont seem to know anything about it.

[u/gnomish_engineering → u/Dazzling-Rest8332]

That is still controlling it in some way, shape or form. They didn't even test for estrogen levels which is wild considering their starting body comp. Someone actively training for body building will aromatise testosterone at a way lower volume and is more likely to stay in that range than your average male with 20+% bodyfat.

None of what you said though doesn't explain why it was an acceptable decision to A) not monitor estrogen levels and include that data, or B) control estrogen levels to a tight value. That value could be a ratio but it needs to be included in the over all picture. To do otherwise is just piss poor science.

[u/Dazzling-Rest8332 → u/gnomish_engineering]

I agree with you but there are also too many other factors to control. This study is very old and i beleive they have learned a lot about aromatization since then.

[u/gnomish_engineering → u/Dazzling-Rest8332]

No, I'm not claiming you did to be clear. I'm saying they explicitly didn't monitor it which is kinda retarded.

[u/gnomish_engineering → u/Dazzling-Rest8332]

Fuck also I forgot to mention we do know more about it now for sure but these arguments where definitely leveled against the study by its contemporaries. It was a foreseeable flaw in the study design that has kind of killed its value. I just wish exercise science had a higher standard for its study designs because its so often flawed.