Do You Gain MORE Muscle Fibers With Training? (Research Overview)

0:00 Intro
0:51 Animal Research
1:16 How Researchers Train Animals
3:44 How Researchers Measure Muscle Fiber Number Increases in Animals
8:43 Results of Animal Research
10:43 The Problem With Studying Muscle Hyperplasia in Humans
11:35 Evidence for Muscle Hyperplasia in Humans
14:05 Evidence Against Muscle Hyperplasia in Humans
17:34 Conclusion on Human Evidence
17:59 Combining the Animal and Human Research
19:02 Role of Anabolic Steroids
21:11 Why Might Fiber Number Increase?
25:46 Concluding Remarks

Music:
1) Music: Lagoons - Strehlow x Chris Mazuera

[grantdavid]

Just want to say the amount and quality of information you share and your analysis of said information is great, keep up the incredible work brother. 💪💯

[azrinshah]

Great channel! You deserve more likes, subs and view tbh. Thank you fr sharing.

Btw, why some studies in human do have hyperplasia to occur and some studies did not? Is it because of different physiological factor/adaptations of different human? Or the type of training, intensity and volume applied to the subject?

[lucamedeiros]

amazing channel and video, congrats from Brazil

[BBQDad]

Thank you for this video. You offer just about the most heavily fact-based information on exercise.

[scott-hrhd]

It seems to me since we haven’t….correction. We cannot perform a fiber count pre and post anabolic steroids for 2 reasons. 1. Anabolic steroids cannot be issued in a controlled manner because they are illegal and 2 a biopsy on a whole muscle isn’t feasible until the death of a patient (could be orchestrated if there is an agreement upon death for research if issue 1 is false) all in all it could be the belief and personal effort that is causing the hyperplasia). Truthfully if science can unlock the ability for hyperplasia by say stem cell like behavior then we could unlock repairing valves in the heart from the inside out.

[Major.Tom.]

13:38 powerlifters = myofibrillar hypertrophy
14:20 bodybuilders = sarcoplasmic hypertrophy

[HHH.]

Great video.
Pls make a video about best exercise for each muscle group and how many sets per muscle group.
Greetings from Germany

[xCAFEFD]

I'm speaking out my ass, I'm a newbie in this and I'm just addicted to sports science videos. And I don't know biology. To be perfectly clear.
Is it possible that the gains people see that are rapid like "newbie gains", retraining and the increased value of protein for advanced lifters (as I understood it) can be explained by the fiber size threshold or the split fibers? I'm thinking on a cellular level increasing cell size much be way easier for the body than creating new structures, especially when they need to span a distance like muscle fibers need as cell splitting is operating on euclidian distances (you can't just bridge a gap in a shorter way than a straight line). Fat cells can grow very quickly by contrast. If we could put on muscles like fat (no distance requirement) we wouldn't have sports science or we'd be limited by cancer research. If that exists. And whatever the practical limit to muscle fiber size is that bi-modal system has evolutionary advantages also, I'd think. Advanced lifters would be working for hyperplasia and then hypertrophy for those few muscle fibers that aren't quite as strong as they should be.
Evolutionarily assuming humans have lived in food scarcity forever it makes sense that something as expensive as building muscles should slow as you get bigger. Because the marginal utility for building 10% more muscle on some massive hulk of a man is far less than building the corresponding weight on a twig of a man. But the body doesn't find solutions "intelligently". Unless there's hormones or other bodily signals that expresses that we already have a lot of muscle in a specific area (and not generally) we may over-grow muscle quite easily I would think or limit/grow in the wrong areas. A local solution like having hyperplasia be a slow indirect process, hypertrophy being a fast process and one demanding the other makes sense to me. If this is the case then is it possible that muscle damage may be very stimulating over (much) longer study periods compared to muscle tension which, as I understand it, is dominant. Metabolic stress _could_ in principle cause damage which gives you split fibers (potentially before full size?), same as with general muscle damage.
Would artificial/induced muscle damage induce more splitting and then a temporary increase in hypertrophy? Maybe even metabolic stress on its own could induce this in a more surgical way as I'm guessing uniformity would be effective.

Does any of that make sense? Is there evidence opposing it? Studies looking at hypertrophy don't do muscle samples and counting for hyperplasia very often I assume. It seems incredibly cumbersome.

[zernix]

Splitting being a product of oxygen restriction jives with how adding a blood flow restricted set is added at the end of a workout seems to produce superior growth vs adding another traditional set. The bfr causes the muscles to inflate and causes stress from reduced oxygen, but supposedly causes more CNS fatigue.

Do you know of any studies regarding breathing restriction, or the effect of bfr on artery hardening / weakening or liver and kidney performance, or of the effect of CNS fatigue on cognitive function?

[jastheavatar]

Are hypertrophy muscles stronger than larger hyperplasia muscles for example? Are those huge Belgian blue cows caused by Myostatin deficiency actually stronger than normal cows?

[mostafa]

Could that re-propose muscle damage and metabolic stress as drivers of muscle growth.
Hypothetically, active stretch induce muscle growth maybe hyperplasia plays a role here not just passive tension.
In metabolic fatiguing exercise, the oxygenation of fibers decreases which might cause splitting of fibers again,
What do you think?

[foxdogsst]

Great Video ! If the muscle created more fibers, then wouldn't the fibers be there forever ? Seems unlikely fibers multiply as much as they grow and shrink. 🤔 What about studies with muscle atrophy, how did those muscles grow ? Thanks 💪

[ELCHDA]

What was the training routine of the animals that had hyperplasia in direct count studies?

[kekkles]

Tell me if I didn't follow correctly, but don't these studies suggest that powerlifting-type training (higher intensity) causes more hyperplasia as opposed to bodybuilding-type training?

[jocaingles]

Could one do the extreme stretching protocols used in animals?

[martinloo]

Looks like this research is outdated and very limited.
The NCBI science reports give more detailed information and tell you how myopfibular growth can be done.

[NiciO.G]

This only happens during puberty from my knowledge …

[cHAOs]

Well we split the atom over 70 years ago but still have absolutely no idea how muscles grow bigger. Too bad more nerds arent strong i guess?

[Ivan_Mohnke]

For rodent studies, do the rats squat with 4 legs?

[nagruvajse]

Those studies are done with amateur people. Studies should be done in natural streetworkout bodybuibilders like myself, and natural street gymnastics calisthenics guys who train totally different then we do, are bit bigger in all muscle parts except chest muscles (since they are not stimulating them primarily yet secondary or even as thirtd party muscles), guys who train static elements like maltese all kind of levers and holds, iron cross etc, have much harder muscles when flexed than we do, telling me as personally that they have more muscle fibers at the similar size package. Those guys train rarely less than 3 hours per day. My trainings are 2-2.5 hours per day of constant muscle breakdown, every muscle group every day till failure, 20-22 hours of break, tomorrow we repeat, also we train 14-15 days in a row, rarely less. If the intensity during those days is higher or something else is different, maybe we'll train few days less or even few days more. I have trained with 50+ guys during the last 13 years, all serious guys who made their muscles so big and lean and strong that average person or an average gym rat, would not think its possible without any gear. And isn't possible without any gear WITH training splits ideology. But as soon as some of those guys try our method, breaking metabolites, every day every muscle till failure or near failure, testing that failure later in the training, mixing stuff always, pyramids, drop sets, long circuit training, they ALL have great results even 10years after training splits and having a life long plato. These are my conclusions, i have made my hoby so good that many professionals with diplomas have less results than me and my crew. No ego here, pure science via observation. If one of us would be in some kind of serious study, i think you would find evidence of hypertrophy and hyperplasia. You could test them easily by testing the hardness of the muscles via flex. Test them without any glygocen and pump present, test them few days after the last training, test them with pump and with lots of training days in a row, test them in what ever state, you will conclude the same....Also, if one of us get out of the vagon, like i did many times in my life. Stop tranining, get fat live and feel like the rest of the world, average...we tend to get back quickly, even in my age (37), i think age is mostly a myth, if youre under 65 or so, you are good to go, but that a side, when get very very lean again, i stay the same, i do not "loose muscles" and i do not think anyone is loosing anything, people are simply convinsed theyve had something and theyve lost it, but theyve lost only water, glygocen, fecal mater and fat. They didnt have no real muscles. When people like me get in shape again, we tend to have it all. The same muscle size like when we're fatter. Thats very interesting to see, me on 7% bf, look9ing even bigger than the same me on 15% bf, but most guys then dropping from 15 to lower number, claim they lost muscle. I have proven on me and many other guys, that simply is not true, They had an illusion of muscles, because they were big but not filled right. I often say, 1kg of feather is not the same as 1kg of gold. So 1kg of fat, water, fecal meter, combined with some glygocen and blood from the pump, are not the real muscles. Hope you guys understood my lame english :)