Strength Science
What we still do not know
A survey of the open questions in strength training, which is a more useful thing to read than another confident answer to a settled one.
Hiro Tanabe
26 articles by Tanabe
Strength Science
Does muscle damage matter for growth?
Muscle damage was long assumed to be one of the mechanisms driving hypertrophy. The evidence increasingly suggests it is a side effect that carries a cost.
Fuelling
Making weight without wrecking your performance
Weight cutting is normalised in several sports and much of the standard practice is both dangerous and counterproductive.
Strength Science
Who to trust: evaluating fitness information sources
The volume of training content vastly exceeds the volume of reliable training content. There are reasonably good signals for telling them apart.
Recovery
How long a muscle actually needs between sessions
The forty-eight-hour rule is a rule of thumb that has hardened into dogma. The real answer depends on what you did, not on the clock.
Strength Science
What muscle protein synthesis measurements actually tell you
A large share of nutrition advice for lifters is built on acute measurements of muscle protein synthesis, which turn out to be a poor predictor of long-term muscle growth.
Fuelling
The boring parts of a lifter’s diet: fibre, micronutrients and vegetables
Protein and calories get all the attention. The things that determine how you feel day to day are usually further down the list.
Strength Science
Women in strength research: what we know and what is missing
A large majority of exercise science participants have historically been men, which means a lot of confident advice given to women rests on studies that did not include any.
Recovery
Recovery monitoring: what the numbers can and cannot tell you
Wearables produce a readiness score every morning. Understanding what is behind it determines whether that number is useful or actively misleading.
Fuelling
Alcohol and training: the honest accounting
Alcohol affects nearly every process training depends on. That does not mean nobody should drink, but it should be a decision made with the information rather than around it.
Fuelling
Supplements worth considering, and the very short list
The supplement industry is enormous and the list of products with credible evidence for a healthy trained person fits comfortably in a paragraph.
Strength Science
Range of motion and the case for training muscles long
One of the more interesting recent lines of research suggests that where in the range you load a muscle affects how much it grows.
Fuelling
Meal frequency and timing: mostly a matter of preference
Six small meals, three large ones, or two within an eight-hour window — the evidence suggests total intake dominates and the schedule is largely yours to choose.
Recovery
Rest between sets: longer than you think
Short rest periods feel productive and are, for most goals, counterproductive. The research here is clearer than the gym convention suggests.
Strength Science
Hormones: what training does to them and what that means
Post-workout hormonal spikes were once considered a central mechanism of muscle growth. The evidence has moved substantially, and the marketing has not.
Fuelling
Gaining and losing weight: sensible rates and why speed backfires
The rate at which you change body weight determines the composition of that change more than almost anything else you do.
Strength Science
Muscle fibre types and why you cannot train around them
Fast-twitch and slow-twitch is a real distinction that gets applied to training in ways the physiology does not support.
Fuelling
Hydration: less complicated than the sports drink industry suggests
Dehydration measurably impairs performance. So does overdrinking, which is more dangerous and less discussed. The sensible approach sits between them and is simpler than either.
Strength Science
Why two people on the same programme get different results
Individual response to identical training varies enormously, and understanding that variance changes how you should interpret both research and your own results.
Fuelling
Carbohydrate around training: what it is actually for
Carbohydrate has been demonised and rehabilitated repeatedly. For anyone doing repeated high-intensity sets, its role is straightforward and worth understanding.
Fuelling
Eating enough: the problem underneath most stalled progress
Chronic underfuelling is common, poorly recognised, and produces symptoms that get attributed to overtraining, bad programming or a lack of discipline.
Strength Science
Muscle confusion and other things that are not real
A collection of gym beliefs that survived long past their evidence, and what the research actually supports instead.
Fuelling
Creatine: the one supplement with unambiguous evidence
Most supplements have thin evidence and enormous marketing. Creatine monohydrate has the opposite problem: an enormous evidence base and almost nothing interesting to say about it.
Strength Science
Reading a study without being fooled by it
A single paper is almost never news. Knowing which questions to ask of a study is what separates useful information from a headline built on twelve untrained undergraduates.
Recovery
Sleep is the training variable you are most likely ignoring
People will spend a great deal on supplements with marginal effects while running a chronic sleep deficit that measurably degrades strength, body composition and injury risk.
Fuelling
How much protein, actually, and when it stops mattering
The evidence on protein intake for lifters is unusually consistent, and it supports numbers well below what the supplement industry suggests and well above official general-population guidance.