[DiskoHexyl]

Age: 22+-3 AND with that weight to ffbm ratio not only untrained, but at least slightly (I’m being generous here) overweight.

With these pre-requisites it almost doesn’t matter what kind of physical activity one does- the muscles will grow anyway. It’s when you are older and/or accustomed to some kind of physical training, that you really noticeably benefit from resistance training.

And still, that ‘almost’ part does a lot of the heavy lifting here. I don’t believe it’s really possible for a couch potato without any experience to correctly assess their 1RM. People with no experience with pain and effort typically can’t push themselves hard enough, so the entire exercise turns to a half-cardio anyway.

And gauging 1 rep max in a bicep curl is especially difficult (saying nothing of a risk of injury).

I understand the complexity and difficulty of researching the subject, but this entire article is no good and is hardly applicable to most of the population IMO

[rocqua]

Are you perhaps reading a personal advice in a paper, disliking the advice, and then finding that due to the experimental design, it doesn't work on you. And then, rather than concluding the paper didn't intend to inform your personal routine, instead conclude that the paper was badly designed? Or to put it differently. Have you considered how many people live in a way you would never consider close to acceptable?

Because your points make sense but it feels like you are arguing against a bit of a strawman, or arguing for a mostly ideal situation rather than current reality?

For overweight and understrength people, is it not very valuable to know that they don't need the extra steps of resistance training to see real improvement in strength and fitness?

[DiskoHexyl]

This doesn’t look like a particularly charitable interpretation of my comment, although my interpretation of the article isn’t either, so it’s only fair.

And no, I am not looking for a personal fitness advice in scientific research anymore (too late for that), but am rather trying to see its applicability to others, as per my understanding of those others around me.

Most people in the developed world aren’t 22-year old males. A significant part of the population is comprised of the elderly or middle-aged, a lot of those people have pre-existing injuries due to under- (too sedentary) and over-use (blue collar work, youth sports). Approaching physical fitness in those groups has its its own set of requirements and limitations, and I believe that in many cases resistance training is a more safe and efficient choice.

Not saying that the youth and children are unimportant, but typically they are already well covered by the organized sports and pt classes in schools and universities, unlike the adults.

My opinion is that the study is both badly designed (likely in a way to make it easier to implement) and is not applicable to the majority of the population.

[vidarh]

> I understand the complexity and difficulty of researching the subject, but this entire article is no good and is hardly applicable to most of the population IMO

Most of the population is untrained, and in many countries a majority is overweight.

I don't think your concern about "correctly assessing their 1RM" matters either - if anything that means the loads are even lower relative to actual 1RM, and their subjects were still getting results.

It may not tell us much about outcomes at the top end, but more knowledge of what advice to give "most people" is important, and if they can get good results at low percentages of 1RM, it seems a lot more likely you'll get people to try.

[DiskoHexyl]

That is exactly the issue with incorrectly gauging 1rm- if it’s too low, than the supposed ‘resistance’ training with 70-80% of 1rm isn’t actually that.

Is it fair to compare A to B, when the A in question isn’t exactly an A, but rather something closer to B?

[vidarh]

It is fairly irrelevant when you're dealing with a group of people who are all using the same means of determining their 1RM.

The point isn't the precise effect on a given percentage of 1RM, but the relative difference between groups.

[vjerancrnjak]

They have to start video recording the workouts. Even veterans in this academic field sometimes design workouts that just can’t be done to failure if you’re actually going to failure over 6-12 weeks.

Even 1 workout sometimes has so many sets prescribed where I cant imagine all of them were actual failure

[sigmoid10]

>It’s when you are older and/or accustomed to some kind of physical training, that you really noticeably benefit from resistance training.

Do you have any sources for that? I'm asking because that is a bold statement given the (almost non-) existing literature on pro athlete hypertophy. Especially since athletes in almost every sport don't even care about hypertrophy - unless you talk about pro bodybuilding. And there you have tons of pharmacological interventions, so it's not really easy to paint a picture either. I don't know a single good study performed on a significant set of tested natural bodybuilders regarding hypertrophy.

Studies like this are also aimed at couch potatoes, because that is the normal population, so the results will be applicable to most people, which in turn is important when you want to get funding for your research. In that sense it also doesn't matter that these people will not have reached their full neuromuscular connection compared to actual weightlifters, because most people haven't either. So the results are still relevant. Usually when scientists sell this kind of research to grant departments, they try to provide a benefit to geriatric or otherwise medically impaired people, so that existing treatments may be improved. Studying muscle building itself just for the sake of it in gymbros is not a good strategy unless you want to spend your own money. And this stuff quickly gets very expensive if you want to do it right.