A study carried out at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) investigated the impact of bodybuilding training in promoting muscle mass gain.
Surprisingly, the results challenge common expectations about the relationship between load and number of repetitions.
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Over an eight-week period, researchers followed 18 participants undergoing different training protocols. 50% of the students performed exercises with greater loads while the other 50% reduced the loads and increased the number of repetitions.
This is one of the common questions about bodybuilding, as there are those who believe that one method can be more effective than the other. Is there, therefore, an ideal way to carry out bodybuilding?
Ideal training: more load and less repetitions or less loads and more repetitions?
After carrying out the comparative analysis between the two groups, the researchers did not observe significant differences in relation to the gain of muscle mass nor metabolic stress, which was assessed by analyzing the substances released into the bloodstream after exercise. exercise.
These results suggest that the focus on increasing the load or the number of repetitions may not be the determining factor for gaining muscle mass.
Other aspects, such as the effort intensity, the total training volume and the individuality of each person can also influence the results obtained.
Participants in the high-load training group carried up to 80% of their own weight during exercise, while in the low-load resistance training group, the maximum percentage was 30%.
However, in resistance training, repetitions were performed until exhaustion, when the muscle was no longer responding.
The research also analyzed that muscle activation occurs differently in each type of training, but the metabolic stress is similar.
This finding reinforces the understanding that different training methods can trigger similar responses in terms of muscle growth.
According to professor Renato Barroso, from Unicamp's Faculty of Physical Education, the debate on which training approach is most efficient for promoting muscle growth is not yet fully understood. enlightened.
However, as said, the results of the study indicate that both training with high load and lower number of repetitions and resistance training with low load and higher number of repetitions can lead to similar results in terms of hypertrophy muscle.
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