welcome to the house of hypertrophy what happens if instead of training every single week you take a complete training break every few weeks does it boost muscle and strength gains or does it hurt and reduce your gains a brand new study has examined this let's Dive In [Music] why could training breaks be beneficial besides potentially lowering fatigue some evidence suggests that as you train week after week the antibiotic Pathways that regulate muscle growth may become desensitized and that taking a break might be able to re-sensitize the anabolic Pathways suggesting that implementing breaks every so often
could lead to more muscle aperture over the long term but this is just molecular data this is where the new study comes into play it's directly measured muscle hypertrophy and strength gains 39 trained individuals with an average of 3.5 years of training experience were assigned into a break or normal group both groups train their upper and lower body twice a week all the muscle growth and strength measurements were done on the lower body so we'll just focus on the lower body training which heads subjects during the Smith machine back squat leg extension calf press and
seated calf raise with these variables the normal group trained every single week for nine weeks the break group trained for four weeks completely rested in the fifth week and then trained from the 6th to the final ninth week the before and after the study strength was assessed by measuring their maximal isometric leg extension strength and Smith machine back score one rep max muscle growth was assessed by measuring rectus femoris and vastus lateralis thickness at 30 50 and 70 of the lower leg length as well as medial gastrocnemius lateral gastrocnemius and Soleus thickness at 25 of
the lower leg length it was ultimately found that by the end of the study all muscle growth measurements increased fairly similarly between the break and normal groups as for strength both groups increased isometric leg extension strength and Smith machine back squat owner MX but the gains were slightly greater for the normal group therefore this study suggests taking a complete break from training in the middle of nine weeks did not reduce or increase muscle growth but it did actually slightly reduce strength gains foreign so this new study does not strictly support the idea that training breaks
re-sensitize your anabolic Pathways and thereby lead to Greater muscle growth but I don't think this study completely debunks the idea of resensitization you'll see potentially why a little later nevertheless there are different ways you may interpret this data since muscle growth was similar between both groups you may be thinking that it's pretty cool the brick groups or similar gains despite training less more precisely the one week break in the middle of the nine weeks resulted in them performing 40 fewer lower body sets translating into 11 less work there's also another study by Oka sawara that
you may be aware of if you followed the house of hypertrophy for a while which had one group train every week across 24 weeks and another group that throughout the 24 weeks cycled between training for six weeks and then completely resting for three weeks chest and triceps growth were similar between both groups by the end of the study despite the fact that break group trained 25 percent less interestingly Benchmark strength gains were also similar between the normal and groups which somewhat conflicts with the newer study nonetheless another interpretation is that if you hate training brakes
the good news is this new study and the ogre Saguaro one indicates they aren't necessary for seeing great gains and we even know strength games were slightly lowered with the breaks in the new study the subjects of the new study also did not seem to be fond of the breaks as they reported feeling lethargic after the break rather than refreshed ultimately You may wish to just take breaks or deloads whenever you feel your body and or mind requires it as opposed to scheduling them every certain number of weeks speaking of deloads which in this case
I mean reducing your volume and or intensity for a week as opposed to stopping training completely it's not clear if the findings of the new study transfer to deloads from a muscle building perspective previous research has interestingly found the molecular responses to deloading and taking breaks were largely similar but future research on Dilo specifically are needed for hypertrophy and presuming sooner or later we'll have studies on this if you're curious about further ideas for creating an effective muscle building program Alpha progression can help you out it's got a flexible custom workout generator that can tailor
a muscle building program to your needs with training variables that are grounded in various meta-analyzes and reviews from the scientific literature input your training experience the equipment you have available if you want to focus or neglect certain muscles how often you want to train and for how long if you prefer to have scheduled delos or Paradise set numbers and Reps in reserve those options are available too you can still edit and individualize things to your liking the flexibility is virtually endless which is something I think is truly special about the app the app also has
aesthetic graphs displaying a long-term progression and there's a database of over 550 exercises with great text and video tutorials the link in the comments and description gives you a free two-week trial of all the app's features and if you like it and go beyond the link gives you 20 off a subscription foreign [Music] 24 weeks chest and triceps growth were similar between a normal empiric group however you can actually see the normal groups seemingly were nearing a plateau whereas the break group gains consistently rebounded at a fairly fast rate after the breaks perhaps due to
being re-sensitized thus it's possible that in a longer time frame the group taking the breaks may have truly built more muscle maybe this also applies to the new study although over nine weeks muscle growth was similar between the normal and break groups if the study was longer perhaps the normal group's growth would net a plateau whereas the break group if they were seeing some kind of very small resensitization effects from the brakes would ultimately experience better hypertrophy for now this is very much speculative it will be interesting to see if future research provides us with
insights into whether this is true or not [Music] this new study finds taking a complete break in the middle of nine weeks did not improve or hurt muscle growth but it did slightly compromise strength gains we've had other research by Oka sawara comparably finding that across 24 weeks taking a three-week break every six weeks did not hurt or improve muscle growth but in this particular ogosaurus study strength gains were also not compromised with a break your interpretations and takeaways from this data May differ depending on your point of view but one clear takeaway from this
data is that breaks should not be fed we know strength gains were reduced in the newer study but the reduction in strength was only small and we still have the ogosaurus study finding strength gains were not compromised by taking training breaks so whether you have to take an unexpected break or you just like occasionally taking a break this is perfectly fine more research is needed on deloads where you reduce volume and or intensity as well as if training brakes or deloads have any benefits in the very long term you can be sure that if any
new data comes along we'll be covering it here at the house of hypertrophy if if you're interested in the breakdown of the science of how often you should train a muscle feel free to check out this video or if you're interested in the science of rep Rangers for hypertrophy feel free to check out this video
