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Good morning. The top hypertrophy researchers land on a realistic number for muscle gain, MLB players go to outside labs for data their clubs withhold, and a sport scientist lays out which GPS numbers are worth watching. Let's get into it...
| News |
RESEARCH
🔬 What a Year of Lifting Actually Adds
📸 Power Lift
Back in November, some of the top hypertrophy researchers in the world met in Finland to answer one question: why do two people on the same program end up with different results? Their write-up came out in the Journal of Applied Physiology this spring.
One number stands out. Across 111 studies and 1,927 people, eight to twelve weeks of lifting added about three to four pounds of lean mass. Stuart Phillips said the popular idea of gaining 18 to 26 pounds of muscle in a year is not backed by published research.
The programming findings:
About 12 sets per muscle per week is where added volume stops paying off
Stopping about two reps short of failure works as well as grinding to true failure
Two minutes or more of rest on multijoint lifts, since 60 seconds or less blunts the adaptation
Machines matched free weights for building size, though the authors stop short of extending that to sprint and jump performance, which is movement-specific
Conditioning only cuts into muscle growth at high weekly volume, and on days with both, lifting comes first
SPORT SCIENCE
📊 Pitchers Are Paying to See Their Own Data
📸 WVU Athletics
The Washington Post went inside a $5 million baseball biomechanics lab at West Virginia, where major league pitchers including Paul Skenes drive in to get measured. More than a dozen players from five teams told the Post they use outside labs like this one because their own clubs will not show them all of their numbers.
The reasons vary. Some clubs want control over how a player trains, and others think the numbers only confuse players. So pitchers pay to get the measurements somewhere else, on force plates and radar that track how much stress goes through each joint on a throw.
One of the things the lab tracks is where that stress lands. If a pitcher’s elbow drops half a centimeter before he releases the ball, the ligament that Tommy John surgery repairs (UCL) takes more of the load. Shift more weight onto the front leg and the knee takes it instead. The aim is moving stress off whatever is absorbing the most of it, not adding velocity.
"Everyone can present data; not nearly as many people can tell you what it means," coach Steve Sabins said.
SPORT SCIENCE
📊 A Guide to Picking the Right GPS Metrics
Writing for Sportsmith, Jo Clubb walks through how to decide which GPS numbers are worth using and who should see them.
She sorts every metric into three groups: distance covered at different speeds, how often an athlete accelerates and decelerates, and what the motion sensor catches like collisions and ground contact. Which group matters depends on the sport. Hockey is her example, where skating distance counts gliding that isn't really work, and speed zones built for runners don't apply on ice.
The last section is about who gets what. Coaches want to know what today's number changes about tomorrow. Management wants the season. Her rule is to give each person the amount they can actually use.
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