Weightlifting Testosterone Vs Lactic Acid

[Vinero]

I've started weight-lifting this summer since I heard Ray Peat say in an interview that having massive muscles have some metabolic advantages. The first one is that muscles can burn fat at rest, which can help to burn any excess PUFA that you ingest, instead of storing it. The second is that muscles actually can produce Testosterone and together with the brain and skin can produce steroids. It seems there are two ways you can train the muscle.
1. Weight lifting which produces Testosterone. This means stimulating the muscle, but not causing fatigue or failure. Also known as stopping when you feel the burn. The burn in the muscle usually occurs after 10-12 reps. This is lactic acid and as we know is anti-metabolic and lowers thyroid function. Dropping the weight before lactic acid builds up avoids this anti-thyroid effect. Lifting like this produces Testosterone, I experience increased testosterone feelings when leaving the gym and the following day. My libido will be very high and I have strong-antidepressant effect. The closest feeling which resembles it is high dose Vitamin K2 which is also known to increase testosterone levels.
2. Weight lifting which produces lactic acid. Fatigue the muscle. Going beyond 12 reps and your muscles start to burn but you push through anyway until failure (15-20 reps). You will generate of a lot of lactic acid and get a huge pump inside your muscle. This lactic acid will produce growth hormone, cortisol and estrogen as a response. After my workout is finished I will feel very drained and my libido is low. I feel lousy and need some time to recover. Working out like this can make you hypothyroid. Your muscles do grow because of the high growth hormone and estrogen but a lot of it is water retention which will disappear when you stop working out for a while.


Obviously if you want to maintain high testosterone and thyroid levels option 1 is going to be better as a way of working out. I did grow a lot of muscle mass using option 2, but it also made me go hypothyroid and lowered my libido and perceived testosterone levels.

 

[Vinero]

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[CoolTweetPete]

Dr. Peat mentions the concentric phase being most important. It's well known in the exercise community that muscle building is done during the eccentric phase, so this makes a lot of sense.

 

[Vinero]

Dr. Peat mentions the concentric phase being most important. It's well known in the exercise community that muscle building is done during the eccentric phase, so this makes a lot of sense.

Indeed, the concentric phase (lifting the weight) is beneficial to mitochondria and produces testosterone. The eccentric phase (dropping the weight) is bad for mitochondria and also damages the muscle. This muscle damage is repaired by your body which results in muscle growth. Regular weight lifting incorporates both concentric and eccentric, so you get the mitochondrial en testosterone producing benefits of the concentric movement, and the increased muscle mass from the eccentric movements.

 

[Logan-]

How about just using dumbbells at home? I've heard RP mentioning dumbbells positively in one of the kmud interviews.

 

[Vinero]

How about just using dumbbells at home? I've heard RP mentioning dumbbells positively in one of the kmud interviews.

Yes dumbbells are good, but the gym is more fun since there are more exercises you can do on different kinds of machines.

 

[YourUniverse]

olympic lifting is almost purely concentric, and is designed to be executed at weights way too heavy to induce any kind of burn

 

[Vinero]

olympic lifting is almost purely concentric, and is designed to be executed at weights way too heavy to induce any kind of burn

True. But olympic lifting can be very taxing on the CNS no? I thought someone on this forum said he crashed his thyroid from olympic lifting. What rep range does olympic lifting use? If it's very low( 1-3) reps with very heavy weights, then that is also very bad for the joints. Also, I don't know if those very low reps are good for muscle growth. Many powerlifters arent that muscular compared to bodybuilders who lift lighter weight but higher reps (10+)

 

[JustAGuy]

True. But olympic lifting can be very taxing on the CNS no? I thought someone on this forum said he crashed his thyroid from olympic lifting. What rep range does olympic lifting use? If it's very low( 1-3) reps with very heavy weights, then that is also very bad for the joints. Also, I don't know if those very low reps are good for muscle growth. Many powerlifters arent that muscular compared to bodybuilders who lift lighter weight but higher reps (10+)

Olympic lifting is the most unhealthy thing you can do for yourself exercise wise in my opinion. It absolutely demolishes your CNS without doing much for growth. I know some people who compete in this on high level and they all feel like crap 24/7 (many can barely get to sleep every night and are always drained). Same with the powerlifters (they usually have more muscles though, but also a lot of fat usually because they need to eat to compensate for the stress). I know CNS intense stuff produces fatigue and a never ending hunger from experience, I would avoid it at all costs and do more exercises on machines at a slower pace.

 

[Vinero]

Olympic lifting is the most unhealthy thing you can do for yourself exercise wise in my opinion. It absolutely demolishes your CNS without doing much for growth. I know some people who compete in this on high level and they all feel like crap 24/7 (many can barely get to sleep every night and are always drained). Same with the powerlifters (they usually have more muscles though, but also a lot of fat usually because they need to eat to compensate for the stress). I know CNS intense stuff produces fatigue and a never ending hunger from experience, I would avoid it at all costs and do more exercises on machines at a slower pace.

So we can conclude that high reps is the way to go. The question is how high. In my experience between 12-20 reps you get insane pumps from the lactic acid buildup. This does produce lots of muscle growth in my experience but is stressful and can crash your testosterone and thyroid. Between 8-12 you can perform quite heavy weight but not generate lactic acid. This seems to be the least stressful and I have higher testosterone when I finish lifting (as evidenced by sky high libodo and mood the following hours). One thing that has yet to be determined is if this lactic acid production/burn in the muscles is necessary for muscle growth. Since 8-12 reps doesn't produce much lactic acid, it will be interesting to see how much muscle growth occurs compared to 12-20 reps.

 

[JustAGuy]

So we can conclude that high reps is the way to go. The question is how high. In my experience between 12-20 reps you get insane pumps from the lactic acid buildup. This does produce lots of muscle growth in my experience but is stressful and can crash your testosterone and thyroid. Between 8-12 you can perform quite heavy weight but not generate lactic acid. This seems to be the least stressful and I have higher testosterone when I finish lifting (as evidenced by sky high libodo and mood the following hours). One thing that has yet to be determined is if this lactic acid production/burn in the muscles is necessary for muscle growth. Since 8-12 reps doesn't produce much lactic acid, it will be interesting to see how much muscle growth occurs compared to 12-20 reps.

Generally for hypertrophy reps doesn’t matter. You can build muscles quite well even on 50+ reps. The more volume = more growth. If your goal is to stay lean you want to do volume without it being stressful. When you get very lean, like 7-8% as a natural, you become super sensitive to any stressor, and it makes it easy to find out what produces the least stress.

The least stress for me is:
Never do exercises standing, by far the most favorable position is doing exercises laying, otherwise seated.
Try to do everything uni-lateral when you can.
The more rest between sets the better. I no longer train chest/arms/abs in the gym. Instead I will do randomly a few sets spread throughout the day of pushups/dips/curls/ab wheel at home. This way it produces very little stress on the system in my experience.

Favor mind muscle connection over moving weight. You want the muscle to go to failure and not the CNS.

I don’t think it’s possible, at least not for me, to do heavy compounds like squats and deadlifts and maintain 8% body fat. It’s just way too taxing for me and makes me feel horrible and creates huge appetite that never ends. Instead I do cycling, uni lateral leg extension and walking for my legs. Personally cycling and walking gave me quite decent leg muscles. My legs grow very easily so it might be different for others but for me it works.

I also do reps pretty slowly, this way I find it to be a lot less taxing. I don’t know how ideal for growth it is but I have 2 friends who compete in bodybuilding internationally (not natural though) and they lift like this aswell, very slow controlled in very high rep range, also they have similar experience to me that they like to do everything laying down or seated.

 

[Sourdoughbanana]

You guys should talk in terms of intensity+frequency rather than X amount of reps.

Also, I wouldn’t compare powerlifters physique to bodybuilders. Those are vastly different world starting with the steroids they use and the goals they’re after. Literally the only thing in common is them going to a gym. Bodybuilders train the way they do purely thanks to drugs allowing me to go gor higher reps.

If you’re natural your pump is going to **** your testosterone and that is way worse than anything else long term. Don’t pay attention to what bodybuilders do, they’re on grams of gear and t3 precisely because of the mechanisms you mentioned.

Plus - We all have different CNS capacities and choline is probably what gives people the ability to sustain the levels of aggression needed for a muscle shock (more choline > more acetylcholine). Lifters should be the one going HARD on fruit and eggs. Which is ironic in a world that is so damn scared of sugar and dietary cholesterol. In before someone says “but eggs have PUFAs”.

Anyways. What if you’re natural or on some sort of HRT? I want a weekly volume of 4 tons for my working sets and I want to get stronger and keep my adrenals/thyroid in check. I want to accumulate 10 reps on a 400lb squat which is 90% of my max. What would be the best plan?

- 2x1 reps every day, Monday to Friday. Perceived effort 80%. Every day feels good. This is how you build massive strength.
- 5x2 reps on one leg day, say on Wednesday. Perceived effort 100%. Absolutely crushing me on the 2nd set, the rest of the week feels awful for a few days. Strength gains stall real quick.
- 5x1 reps on two separate leg days. Perceived effort 90%. Danger zone, libido not as high post workout etc. Strength gains can be subpar.

Since hypertrophy is pretty much more weight for more reps for a heavier challenging workload, I’d prioritize a smart strength program with little risk. Leave the high rep sets with 200/300lbs to the guys on juice or to the natty idiots who think going balls to the wall is the way to go. And eat eggs

 

[Logan-]

Are Bigger Muscles Better? Antioxidants and the Response to Exercise - Perfect Health Diet | Perfect Health Diet

The Bjørnsen Study: Strength
Fortunately, Bjørnsen and colleagues also reported another key biomarker: strength, as indicated by 1 rep maximum weight. Here is the data:



The exercises that utilize the rectus femoris muscle, the one that grew biggest in the placebo group, are the leg extension (b) and leg press (c). And here we see something interesting: in both cases, the antioxidant group increased their 1RM by more than the placebo group. Yes, the improvement was not statistically significant. But it was there. According to the text, on average, the antioxidant group increased their leg press 1RM by 18.7%, the placebo group by 15.8%.

So the antioxidant group gained more strength but less size than the placebo group. Which group was made healthier by the program?

I’ll put my money down on this: the smaller muscle that can exert more force is the healthier muscle. A gargantuan but weak muscle is an unhealthy muscle.

...

Is Bodybuilding Safe?
If large size can be an indication of damage in muscle, then many techniques which cause muscular hypertrophy will be health-damaging. The healthiest strength gains might come with only small size gains, as the muscle becomes more efficient. It is only unhealthy muscle that becomes super large.

If so, then bodybuilders, who are judged on the size of their muscles, not their strength, will be tempted to use health-damaging and muscle-damaging techniques, like antioxidant deficiencies, to expand their muscle mass. Presumably the winning bodybuilders will be those who use all effective techniques to grow muscle, including the health-damaging ones. So we should expect champion bodybuilders to die young.

I have not seen statistical evidence, but anecdotal lore suggests that champion bodybuilders do, indeed, die young, often of heart diseases (indicating muscle damage).

...

Everyone who works out should be aware: when it comes to muscles, bigger is not the same as better. The healthiest muscles are those in a wiry physique – modest size, but able to exert a lot of force.

 

[Steene]

Generally for hypertrophy reps doesn’t matter. You can build muscles quite well even on 50+ reps. The more volume = more growth. If your goal is to stay lean you want to do volume without it being stressful. When you get very lean, like 7-8% as a natural, you become super sensitive to any stressor, and it makes it easy to find out what produces the least stress.

The least stress for me is:
Never do exercises standing, by far the most favorable position is doing exercises laying, otherwise seated.
Try to do everything uni-lateral when you can.
The more rest between sets the better. I no longer train chest/arms/abs in the gym. Instead I will do randomly a few sets spread throughout the day of pushups/dips/curls/ab wheel at home. This way it produces very little stress on the system in my experience.

Favor mind muscle connection over moving weight. You want the muscle to go to failure and not the CNS.

I don’t think it’s possible, at least not for me, to do heavy compounds like squats and deadlifts and maintain 8% body fat. It’s just way too taxing for me and makes me feel horrible and creates huge appetite that never ends. Instead I do cycling, uni lateral leg extension and walking for my legs. Personally cycling and walking gave me quite decent leg muscles. My legs grow very easily so it might be different for others but for me it works.

I also do reps pretty slowly, this way I find it to be a lot less taxing. I don’t know how ideal for growth it is but I have 2 friends who compete in bodybuilding internationally (not natural though) and they lift like this aswell, very slow controlled in very high rep range, also they have similar experience to me that they like to do everything laying down or seated.

I agree to most of your points you said except doing unilateral exercises. Performing lateral raises unilateral activates your deltoids way less than doing them bilateral same goes for your posterior deltoids. Standing dumbbell shoulder presses for example activate your whole shoulders more intensively than seatet but it is more taxing for your CNS. Also I would never take anything for granted from people who juice regularly you can do all your exercises with horrible form and everything will grow like crazy as long you don't get joint problems with that it doesn't really matter.

 

[YourUniverse]

squats and deadlifts stopped feeling "taxing" when I started strengthening my abs considerably (a plank, a twist, and a situp/crunch should hit everything).

think big lifts feel taxing only to the degree that the spine is under direct stress -> strong abs probably protect against this

 

[Vinero]

The Bjørnsen Study: Strength
Fortunately, Bjørnsen and colleagues also reported another key biomarker: strength, as indicated by 1 rep maximum weight. Here is the data:



The exercises that utilize the rectus femoris muscle, the one that grew biggest in the placebo group, are the leg extension (b) and leg press (c). And here we see something interesting: in both cases, the antioxidant group increased their 1RM by more than the placebo group. Yes, the improvement was not statistically significant. But it was there. According to the text, on average, the antioxidant group increased their leg press 1RM by 18.7%, the placebo group by 15.8%.

So the antioxidant group gained more strength but less size than the placebo group. Which group was made healthier by the program?

I’ll put my money down on this: the smaller muscle that can exert more force is the healthier muscle. A gargantuan but weak muscle is an unhealthy muscle.

...

Is Bodybuilding Safe?
If large size can be an indication of damage in muscle, then many techniques which cause muscular hypertrophy will be health-damaging. The healthiest strength gains might come with only small size gains, as the muscle becomes more efficient. It is only unhealthy muscle that becomes super large.

If so, then bodybuilders, who are judged on the size of their muscles, not their strength, will be tempted to use health-damaging and muscle-damaging techniques, like antioxidant deficiencies, to expand their muscle mass. Presumably the winning bodybuilders will be those who use all effective techniques to grow muscle, including the health-damaging ones. So we should expect champion bodybuilders to die young.

I have not seen statistical evidence, but anecdotal lore suggests that champion bodybuilders do, indeed, die young, often of heart diseases (indicating muscle damage).

...

Everyone who works out should be aware: when it comes to muscles, bigger is not the same as better. The healthiest muscles are those in a wiry physique – modest size, but able to exert a lot of force.

Are Bigger Muscles Better? Antioxidants and the Response to Exercise - Perfect Health Diet | Perfect Health Diet

Growth can be healthy or unhealthy. Testosterone produces healthy growth, while estrogen produces unhealthy growth. The champion bodybuilders that die of heart disease have obviously used a lot of exogenous steroids which convert massively into estrogen inside the body. Estrogen is known to cause heart damage and eventually heart failure. Ray Peat said that the heart is actually an organ that concentrates Testosterone. Why? Because high testosterone levels inhibit the breakdown of protein that cortisol causes under stress. This would be rapidly fatal for tissues like the heart, if stress continues too long and cortisol does it;s job of breaking down protein to convert to sugar.
Having high muscle mass is evidence that the individual is not under chronic stress and has enough Testosterone to be resistant to the effects of cortisol. It's a signal of low-stress. Smaller muscles, which are associated with aging and sickness, is actually a sign that the organism can't deal with the stress and cortisol is unopposed. I don't think having large muscles is a sign of stress, on the contrary, small muscles are a sign of stress. Bodybuilding can be healthy if done correctly (stimulating the muscle, but not overtraining/overtaxing)

 

[Teres]

Olympic weightlifting is the discipline in the realm of neur0-muscular development. The few simple, basic, multi-joint movements and methodology of preparation combined offer advantages no other sport in a simmilar category offers. Rapid movement in a perfect form. No slow joint grinding. Just clear explosive impulse, successfull or not.
The olympic lifts can and will constantly give you the opportunity to injure yourself seriously if either you are a proffessional athlete or a complete idiot. Olympic weightlifters do have injuries quite often. The reason is not the danger olympic weightlifting poses by itself, but the lifters' goals and the intensity of preparation required in order to be fulfilled. The strive to make an entire nation proud of you can make an individual to push his physiology to boundaries that pose threat to one's health. On the other side of these boundaries awaits either gold and prestige or the dissapointment of millions of people. Your teammates, coaches, fellow countrymen.
The olympic lifts are not dangerous. The ego is. Olympic weightlifting punishes one's ego and yes, it hurts. A lot and for a long time. Move the bar without proper form and in an instant you feel you're doing something wrong. Put a plate on the bar in excess, more than you can deal with, and you end up on your bottom. You have no spotter as on the bench press. You have no fancy machines with cables who are fooling you that you're capable of more than you're actually capable of. You cannot arch your lower back, torturing yourself until you "lock" the deadlift. It's just you and a bar, a bar ready to punish you in case you approach it in a reckless manner.

As far as the central nervous system goes, a set or two of five reps heavy deadlifting feels worse than ten explosive snatch-singles, successfull or not.

 

[YourUniverse]

..
The olympic lifts are not dangerous. The ego is.

..

As far as the central nervous system goes, a set or two of five reps heavy deadlifting feels worse than ten explosive snatch-singles, successfull or not.

:)

 

[Sourdoughbanana]

I was actually mentioning 5 sets of 2 reps not the opposite.

If technique is good in PL the benefits are similar to WL

 

[Hans]

To me, short workouts, if it produces lactate or not, is far better than long workouts. Too much heavy weight will drain the system too fast, followed by fatigue and then the metabolism takes a hit. So I incorporate both low reps, 3-5, moderate reps 6-12 and rarely high reps 13+.
Your workout should also be designed around your current state of health and your glycogen stores. I find that if I split my workout in two, meaning do one part in the morning and the other in the afternoon, the workouts are less taxing, I recover faster and grow faster. Also, if I train real intense (short rest), but keep the workouts short, I recover quickly and feel much better, even if the volume stays the same.
2-3 sets of a heavy compound movement (3-5 reps) aren't taxing at all and provides more than enough stimulus for strength and hypertrophy gains.

Plus everyone's goals are different. My goal is to develop every aspect of my physique completely, and for that only heavy weights won't work. I use all kinds of techniques to stimulate the muscle and they respond very well to it. But someone that just wants to have bulbous undefined muscles, can just use one compound movement for a muscle group to stimulate it for growth.