Busting Broscience: Does Increasing Testosterone and Anabolic Hormones with Exercise Equal More muscle and Strength?
December 30th, 2009
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by Mike T Nelson · Filed Under: Strength · athletic performance
Busting Broscience: Does Increasing Testosterone and Anabolic Hormones with Exercise Equal More muscle and Strength?
Anabolic Hormones = More Muscle (Hypertrophy), Right?
You hear this in gyms everywhere,
“Dude, to get huge you need to get your test levels up higher”
or this one
“Brotha, you can’t workout any longer than 45 minutes or else you will go completely catabolic bro!”
What? Is this true?
Have I been wasting all these years in the gym lifting longer than 45 minutes? Do anabolic hormones from exercise matter for building muscle (hypertrophy)?
Where is the research?
I think the answer will surprise you.
In short, anabolic hormones from exercise don’t do much of anything for muscle growth.
from the study referenced below
“We report here that, despite being exposed to substantial differences in purportedly anabolic hormones such as testosterone, GH, and IGF-1, the rate of MPS (my note, this is Muscle Protein Synthesis, so adding protein to muscles to make them bigger) in identically exercised muscles was not different.
These data demonstrate that local factors are paramount in determining not only the signalling pathway activation but also the response of MPS.
Furthermore, our results indicate that increases in MPS are able to occur without increases in systemic anabolic hormone concentrations and are not enhanced by the acute elevation that can follow resistance exercise; this finding is in agreement with previous work from our lab showing that increases in circulating hormones are not necessary for hypertrophy (Wilkinson et al. 2006).”
Dave Barr from Muscle and Fitness and I geek out completely and discuss hormones and their effects in the video below. This was filmed from the ACSM 2009 Annual Conference and I had a blast there. I went there for a relaxing vacation (literally).
More Info!
Listen to the MP3 below for all the details and what you can do to improve your performance. It is time to put this one to rest and there is even data going back to 1975 also (McManus et al.)
Also see this post
below
Supplements
To Naturually Increase Testosterone
More is not always better. Better is better
Let me know what you think by posting comments as always. Comments make me all warm and fuzzy.
Rock on
REFERENCES
Resistance exercise-induced increases in putative anabolic hormones do not enhance muscle protein synthesis or intracellular signalling in young men
We aimed to determine whether exercise-induced elevations in systemic concentration of testosterone, growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) enhanced post-exercise myofibrillar protein synthesis (MPS) and phosphorylation of signalling proteins important in regulating mRNA translation. Eight young men (20 ± 1.1 years, BMI = 26 ± 3.5 kg m?2) completed two exercise protocols designed to mai
ntain basal hormone concentrations (low hormone, LH) or elicit increases in endogenous hormones (high hormone, HH). In the LH protocol, participants performed a bout of unilateral resistance exercise with the elbow flexors. The HH protocol consisted of the same elbow flexor exercise with the contralateral arm followed immediately by high-volume leg resistance exercise. Participants consumed 25 g of protein after arm exercise to maximize MPS. Muscle biopsies and blood samples were taken as appropriate. There were no changes in serum testosterone, GH or IGF-1 after the LH protocol, whereas there were marked elevations after HH (testosterone, P < 0.001; GH, P < 0.001; IGF-1, P < 0.05). Exercise stimulated a rise in MPS in the biceps brachii (rest = 0.040 ± 0.007, LH = 0.071 ± 0.008, HH = 0.064 ± 0.014% h?1; P < 0.05) with no effect of elevated hormones (P = 0.72). Phosphorylation of the 70 kDa S6 protein kinase (p70S6K) also increased post-exercise (P < 0.05) with no differences between conditions. We conclude that the transient increases in endogenous purportedly anabolic hormones do not enhance fed-state anabolic signalling or MPS following resistance exercise. Local mechanisms are likely to be of predominant importance for the post-exercise increase in MPS.
Elevations in ostensibly anabolic hormones with resistance exercise enhance neither training-induced muscle hypertrophy nor strength of the elbow flexors
The aim of our study was to determine whether resistance exercise-induced elevations in endogenous hormones enhance muscle strength and hypertrophy with training. Twelve healthy young men (21.8 +/- 1.2 y, BMI = 23.1 +/- 0.6 kg(.)m(-2)) independently trained their elbow flexors for 15 weeks on separate days and under different hormonal milieu. In one training condition, participants performed isolated arm curl exercise designed to maintain basal hormone concentrations (low hormone, LH); in the other training condition, participants performed identical arm exercise to the LH condition followed immediately by a high volume of leg resistance exercise to elicit a large increase in endogenous hormones (High Hormone, HH). There was no elevation in serum growth hormone (GH), insulin-like growth factor (IG
F-1) or testosterone after the LH protocol, but significant (P < 0.001) elevations in these hormones immediately and 15 and 30 min after the HH protocol. The hormone responses elicited by each respective exercise protocol late in the training period were similar to the response elicited early in the training period indicating that a divergent post-exercise hormone response was maintained over the training period. Muscle cross-sectional area increased by 12% in LH and 10% in HH (P < 0.001) with no difference between conditions (condition x training interaction, P = 0.25). Similarly, type I (P < 0.01) and type II (P < 0.001) muscle fiber CSA increased with training with no effect of hormone elevation in the HH condition. Strength increased in both arms but the increase was not different between the LH and HH conditions. We conclude that exposure of loaded muscle to acute exercise-induced elevations in endogenous anabolic hormones enhances neither muscle hypertrophy nor strength with resistance training in young men. Key words: testosterone, growth hormone, IGF-1, anabolism.
Skeletal muscle leucine incorporation and testosterone uptake in exercised guinea pigs.
McManus BM, Lamb DR, Judis JJ, Scala J. Eur J Appl Physiol Occup Physiol. 1975 Aug 15;34(3):149-56.
We examined the changes induced by daily treadmill exercise on body weights, plantaris muscle weights, plantaris protein concentrations, and L-leucine-4,5-3H incorporation into plantaris muscles of normal and castrated young male guinea pigs and of castrated animals receiving testosterone replacement therapy, and compared the testosterone-1,2-3H uptake by plantaris muscles of trained normal guinea pigs to that of untrained animals. Trained animals exhibited significantly lower body and muscle weights and greater labeled leucine incorporation into sarcoplasmic and myofibrillar proteins but did not show significant changes in protein concentrations or labeled testosterone uptake. The level of physical activity of the young animals studied appeared to be more important than gonadal endocrine function in altering protein metabolism and muscle and body weights. Because hypertrophy did not occur in the trained plantaris muscles, which had elevated rates of labeled leucine incorporation, it appears that the trained animals had a higher muscle protein turnover rate. It seems unlikely that testosterone plays an important role in these activity-related phenomena.
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