Field Notes
The evidence, read closely.
Thirty-three entries on training, recovery and nutrition. Each one sets out what was measured, what we take from it, and the strongest case against our reading.
33 entries, each with its sources
New here? Start with Adherence 01: The first month, then the Loading fundamentals hub.
Fundamentals
The variables everyone argues about, and what they turn out to be arguing about.
Most training advice is organized by variable. How long to rest, where to stop a set, how often to train a muscle. Each gets argued separately, each has its own camps, and each has produced its own body of research.
8 min read7 references- 01Rest between setsThe short-rest recommendation came from a hypothesis. The hypothesis has since been tested.
Rest length appears to matter for growth mainly because it changes how many repetitions you complete on later sets: when one study equated volume load, the difference disappeared. Rest until your next set is not compromised, around two minutes on most exercises. If you are short on time, cut a set or pair non-competing exercises, and leave the rest alone.
7 min read7 references - 02Reps in reserveFailure costs you something measurable. What it buys has been measured too.
End most sets when you think one to three good reps are left. You are probably about a rep further from failure than it feels, so trust the target rather than grinding an extra rep on a heavy barbell. Taking every set to failure roughly doubled the drop in bar speed after a session, and in one trial of the most experienced lifters yet tested it grew no more muscle than stopping a rep or two short. Pooled data lean slightly toward closer to failure for size, so the last set of a machine or cable exercise is the cheap place to go all the way.
8 min read8 references - 03Training frequencyFrequency looks like it matters. Then someone holds volume constant.
With weekly volume held constant, training a muscle more often produced no more growth or strength. On our reading, frequency matters as the way volume gets delivered: once your weekly sets exceed what one session can productively hold, spread them across sessions, which for most people means two or three exposures per muscle a week.
8 min read7 references - 04Load and repetition rangeWhether load matters depends on how close to failure you train.
Light loads built as much muscle as heavy ones, but only in trials that took every set to failure, and heavy loads built more strength regardless. Our position, an inference no trial has tested, is that load matters more the further from failure you stop. Light, high-repetition sets such as bodyweight and small-muscle isolation work should therefore be taken closer to failure.
8 min read3 references - 05Progressive overloadFew coaches dispute that training has to get harder. The evidence is mostly about how.
Progressive overload means making a lift a little harder once it has gotten easier, so your body keeps a reason to adapt. To run it, pick a rep range such as 8 to 12; when every set reaches the top with clean reps, add the smallest weight jump you can and work back up from the bottom of the range. In two randomized trials, adding reps worked about as well as adding weight, and in the one trial that compared progressing with not progressing, in untrained women, progressing roughly doubled the growth.
8 min read7 references - 06Exercise selectionMuscles grow unevenly, and that changes how you read every study in this branch, including ours.
Muscles grow unevenly, and the exercise you choose changes where within a muscle the growth lands. Use a small number of exercises per muscle, varied deliberately across positions and held long enough to progress on. The same finding means the single-site measurements most trials in this branch rely on are less precise than their decimal places suggest.
7 min read4 references - 07Weekly volumeThe number the rest of this branch keeps pointing at, and the reason it is harder to state than it looks.
More weekly sets build more muscle, with diminishing returns and no clear plateau in the range studied; strength plateaus early. No set count means much until you fix how indirect sets are counted. Our position is that weekly volume is a target you build toward, because the limit most people hit is recovery.
8 min read3 references - 08Warm-upOne trial found the recommended protocol made performance worse. The trial that varied the protocol found it did nothing at all.
Ascending warm-up sets cost repetitions on isolation exercises in one trial and made no difference on bench and leg press in another. Our position is that the specific warm-up is a tool for getting familiar with the load: several ascending sets before a heavy compound lift, one or none before isolation work. No trial has tested whether warm-ups affect muscle growth.
8 min read5 references - 09Movement velocity and intentHow much a set slows down turns out to split the outcomes it produces.
Trying to accelerate the bar as fast as possible improved strength and speed more than deliberately slower lifting at the same load. How far a set slows before you stop splits the outcomes: deeper sets favored size and cost jump and speed performance. Different sets in a session can carry different stopping points, because they are doing different jobs.
8 min read6 references - 10Time off and coming backWhat a layoff costs, and how long it takes to get back.
In older adults, three to six months off produced no statistically detectable loss of muscle size, and strength returned in under eight weeks of retraining. Strength comes back faster than connective tissue is ready for it, so pace the return to tissue tolerance, not to the weights you can lift in week three.
7 min read2 references - 11Estimated and tested maxesA tested max is more reliable than its reputation. The case for estimating it rests somewhere else.
A tested one-rep max is a reliable measurement. The case for estimating it from your working sets is that a tested number describes one day, cannot tell you how hard a percentage will feel, and has not been shown to produce better strength gains than loading by effort. Our position is to run on the estimate, show its error, and test a true max only when you need the real number.
8 min read6 references - 12Exercise orderOrder decides which lift gets your best effort. It has not been shown to decide how much muscle you grow.
The first exercise in a session gets the most repetitions and the largest strength gains, but order has not been shown to change how much muscle you grow. Put first the lift you most want to strengthen, and fast or technical work before heavy work, which is our extension of the evidence. A heavy set before a jump is a deliberate exception for strong lifters training for speed.
7 min read5 references - 13Adaptation weeks and deloadsA way in and a way out. Run either one like an ordinary hard week and you are running a different program.
An adaptation week prepares you for the loading weeks: early strength gains are thought to be mostly neural, a matter of learning the lift, so movements are learned and working weights found here. A deload is meant to clear fatigue that can outlast a rest day or two. Neither week has been shown to add muscle by itself, and a week of complete rest mid-block cost trained lifters some strength. Our position: run both as written, and keep training through the deload.
7 min read13 references
Recovery
What happens between sessions, and how much of it you can influence.
Training produces an inflammatory and oxidative response. A large recovery industry exists to reduce it, on the shared premise that the response is a cost to be minimized.
6 min read3 references- 01Cold water immersionSomeone put the assumption underneath the ice bath into a muscle biopsy.
If you lift for size or strength, our position is to keep the plunge away from your sessions. In trials, cold within about fifteen minutes of lifting probably cost a little muscle and strength. It did not lower inflammation inside the muscle in the two studies that looked, although it does appear to ease soreness. Nobody has tested whether waiting a few hours removes the cost, so the popular delay rules are guesses.
8 min read18 references - 02Delayed-onset muscle sorenessSoreness is real information. It is not the information it usually gets read as.
Soreness tells you something happened, not how much you will grow: it responds to novelty, contraction type, unfamiliar range and the muscle trained, none of which scale with the growth stimulus. Whether muscle damage contributes to growth is still open. Do not program for soreness, do not treat its absence as failure, and judge a program on whether load and reps move over months.
8 min read9 references - 03Antioxidant supplementsWhere antioxidants blunt adaptation, dose, breadth and timing appear to matter more than the compound, though no trial has tested that directly.
High-dose vitamin C and E, and N-acetylcysteine, blunt adaptive signaling in humans, but pooled trials show no measurable effect on aerobic capacity, endurance performance or lean mass. Our reading is that the money buys nothing measurable for training. If you take them for another reason, moving the dose away from your hardest sessions costs nothing and avoids the only condition under which blunting has been consistently observed.
7 min read10 references - 04Anti-inflammatory drugsThe one intervention in this branch that does suppress inflammation, and eleven trials that do not agree on what that costs.
Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and acetaminophen suppress the prostaglandin pathway. Eleven controlled trials have given one during a resistance-training program and measured muscle growth: two found more growth with the drug, one found less, and eight found no difference. The trials differ in drug, dose, comparator, population and measurement, and none was designed to say which of those decides the result. This entry sets out what each one found and leaves the question open.
8 min read16 references
Almost every gym, clinic and recovery studio offers some way of changing your temperature. Ice baths, saunas, hot tubs, cryotherapy chambers, contrast suites, heated wraps. The offerings contradict each other. Cold is sold as calming the tissue down, heat as opening it up, and both are sold to the same person on the same afternoon.
6 min read4 references- 01The daily cold plungeThe studies behind the metabolic claims used two-hour exposures at mild temperatures.
The metabolic and hormonal claims for daily plunging come from long, mild exposures, one to two hours at a time, that a three-minute ice plunge does not resemble. What survives in general-population trials is less stress at twelve hours, better sleep quality and better quality of life, not better mood. If you plunge, keep your head above water and do not hold your breath.
8 min read8 references - 02Heat after trainingTwo tubs, opposite logic, and two small effects pointing in opposite directions, neither certain enough to count on.
Heat after training showed a small possible benefit for muscle size and none for strength, pooled from 125 people in studies of fair to poor quality. Both heat and cold reduce soreness, and only cold has a point estimate pointing away from growth. Heat after training is a reasonable thing to do and a poor thing to count on.
8 min read7 references - 03Contrast therapyShort noteNote. Does alternating hot and cold beat just picking one?
Contrast therapy beats doing nothing for soreness and strength loss, but in the reference meta-analysis it was not shown to beat simply picking one temperature, and all eighteen trials were at high risk of bias. What it does to training adaptation has not been studied.
3 min read2 references
Nutrition advice arrives with more precision than nutrition evidence supports. A target of 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram. A calorie figure calculated to the digit. A creatine loading protocol with a schedule. A gain rate stated as though it were measured.
5 min read4 references- 01Protein intakeThe most-cited number in sports nutrition comes from a breakpoint that did not reach significance.
The 1.6 g/kg figure comes from a breakpoint that did not reach statistical significance, with a confidence interval running from about 1.0 to 2.2 g/kg (Morton et al., 2018). Our position is that 1.6 g/kg is a reasonable floor, not a target, and that whether more helps is uncertain, not known to be wasted. Protein is more likely to be over-thought than neglected.
7 min read4 references - 02CreatineThe supplement where the evidence is strong enough that the interesting question is which details do not matter.
Creatine monohydrate alongside resistance training increases strength: roughly four and a half kilograms on an upper-body max in pooled trials of adults under 50, almost all of them men. Take it daily and do not fuss over timing. In older adults, dose and loading made no difference to lean mass, although the strength gains depended on a loading phase or a higher dose.
7 min read4 references - 03BMR, TDEE and the error around themThe number a calculator gives you is a starting point with a wide interval attached, and the interval is the useful part.
A calculator's estimate of your daily energy expenditure can plausibly be off by a few hundred calories a day, which is the whole size of a normal deficit or surplus. Treat it as a starting hypothesis and correct it from your weight trend, not from a new calculation.
8 min read8 references - 04How fast to lose, how fast to gainOne trial found the slow group ending with more muscle. The same group found the difference gone a year later.
In the reference trial, athletes losing 0.7% of bodyweight a week ended with more lean mass than those losing 1.4%, and the difference was gone at twelve months (Garthe et al., 2011a). Our position is to aim for a rate that keeps the deficit moderate, near 0.5 to 1% a week for most people. Our figures for gaining are judgment, not a finding.
8 min read3 references