Flywheel training beat traditional weights for cognitive flexibility
Women averaging 66.8 years lifted twice a week for 36 weeks. Inhibitory control and working memory improved on both machines — cognitive flexibility only clearly favored the flywheel.
Stopping 1-3 reps short matched training to failure over eight weeks
One leg trained to failure, the other stopped with 1-3 reps in reserve, in the same people. After eight weeks the muscle thickness gap was 0.019 cm and the 1RM gap 0.198 kg.
Strength divided by muscle size still carries a size effect
Ratio normalisation assumes strength and muscle size sit on a straight line through the origin. Working through NHANES data, this paper shows what the ratio hides when that assumption is never tested.
Grip strength rose 18-21% while 21 kg came off on tirzepatide
Twelve months of records from 93 men. Body weight fell about 21 kg and lean body mass fell 4-6 kg, yet estimated skeletal muscle mass rose 1.6-3.7 kg and grip strength rose 18-21%.
World-class skiers keep heavy lifting off their hard cardio days
Training logs from 17 Olympic and World Championship medallists. Around 90% of their strength sessions were paired with 44 minutes of low-intensity endurance, and almost never with hard intervals.
A 100-day break cost more agility than the training block had added
Sixteen women over 60 went through training and a 100-day layoff twice. The first layoff cost 19.5% of agility and 21.6% of lower-body endurance; the second cost far less.
Full squats raised 1RM nearly four times as much as half squats
Over eight weeks the only difference was depth. Full-squat training raised full-squat 1RM by 10.2% against 2.7%, and only that group got faster over 5 and 10 metres.
Creatine helps when you start lifting again, not while you rest
Through immobilisation, creatine did not reliably preserve muscle size or strength. The benefit showed up once progressive resistance training resumed.
Lifting rewires the brain's output circuit, not just the muscle
A meta-analysis of 11 trials and 244 adults found resistance training significantly raised corticospinal excitability. This is why strength outruns visible size.
Static stretching grew the hamstring aponeurosis but not the muscle
Ten weeks, one leg eccentric and one leg stretching. Aponeurosis volume grew on both. Muscle volume grew only on the eccentric leg, by 22-42%.
After ACL reconstruction the quad stayed smaller but 1RM matched
An average of 2.6 years post-injury, the reconstructed leg still had 7.5% less knee-extensor volume. Single-leg press 1RM showed no difference between legs.
Lifting twice a week tracks with lower depression odds — cardio did not
Among 7,278 US adults, meeting the strength-training guideline was associated with 29% lower odds of depression. Meeting the 150-minute cardio guideline showed no independent association.
Muscle growth slows itself down by design
A bigger muscle turns its own growth signal down. A multiscale simulation also shows why the same program produces different results depending on muscle shape.
Supplement doping cases cluster in pre-workouts and boosters
Contamination risk is not spread evenly across supplements. It concentrates in multi-ingredient products, pre-workouts, weight-loss and muscle-building products, and testosterone boosters.
On GLP-1 drugs, protein percentage holds while grams collapse
Protein as a share of total energy is largely preserved on GLP-1 therapy. The problem is that total energy falls, dragging absolute grams below the threshold that stimulates muscle protein synthesis.
Folic acid plus lifting added 4.79kg of muscle in eight weeks
Only the group taking 0.4mg of folic acid daily alongside resistance training moved both muscle mass and body fat substantially. It is a preliminary trial with ten people per group.
12mg of capsaicin moved neither strength endurance nor jump height
In a double-blind crossover trial with 16 advanced lifters, capsaicin changed nothing in leg press repetitions or countermovement jump height.
Two loads are enough for a force-velocity profile, if they are far apart
Instead of testing all eleven loads, two will reproduce nearly the same profile. There is one condition: the two loads have to be far enough apart.
An ejection fraction of 79% does not mean a stronger heart
A coronary spasm case report reads an ejection fraction of 79% with a markedly reduced end-systolic volume as a small hyperdynamic ventricle. The septum that looked thickened was scar, not muscle.
The growth signal that builds cartilage turns it toward bone when there is too much
An osteoarthritis review finds TGF-β builds cartilage at physiological levels and drives chondrocyte hypertrophy and synovial fibrosis when overactivated. The route the signal takes changes with the dose.
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