Brad Schoenfeld, PhD engagement report

Best tweets

• Aug 13, 202636x their median

  Oatmeal is the biggest scam on earth. Dave Asprey doesn’t hold back. He calls it peasant food. The cheap stuff you feed people when you don’t care if they thrive. It spikes blood sugar harder than white sugar or ice cream. Almost no protein. Fiber that pulls minerals out of you. Often loaded with glyphosate. He’d rather give his kids real ice cream made with milk, sugar and eggs. At least that has some nutrients and hits blood sugar less. Oatmeal leaves you hungry again in twenty minutes unless you drown it in butter and pair it with steak. I’ve watched the same pattern with a lot of “healthy” defaults. They sound virtuous. Then you look closer and the numbers don’t add up. I’m not one to preach. I ate oatmeal for breakfast for years. If the breakfast leaves you hungrier and more depleted than a doughnut, the marketing did its job better than the food did.

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• Aug 15, 20264.7x their median

  As shown in our recent study, good gains in muscle strength and size can be achieved with as little as ~1 hour of resistance training per week, provided sets are performed with a high level of effort (close to failure). For most of the general population, this can be sufficient to achieve their strength and muscle-building goals. The key is simply to get to the gym, train hard and be consistent 💪 https://t.co/WLVSYfm0yx

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• Jul 29, 20264.3x their median

  This one's a real head-scratcher. The authors report that resistance training combined with participants' habitual diet produced essentially no gains in lean mass in resistance-trained men over an 8-week intervention. Yet supplementing with 30 g of whey protein resulted in a 3.5-lb increase, and adding 10 g of collagen to the whey nearly doubled that effect to ~6 lbs! What makes these findings especially puzzling is that participants reported consuming ~1.8 g/kg/day of protein at baseline—an intake generally considered to be at or near the upper threshold for maximizing muscle hypertrophy. Under those conditions, it's difficult to imagine whey supplementation providing such a substantial additional benefit, and even harder to reconcile how adding collagen would nearly double the gains. Would like to see this study replicated... https://t.co/msZXPxVUcu

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• Jun 28, 20263.1x their median

  The "8-12 reps for hypertrophy" rule exists because enhanced bodybuilders grow from anything. Before the steroid era, everyone trained heavy. Four to six reps, compound lifts, progressive overload. It worked. Then steroids arrived, and the rules quietly broke. Suddenly bodybuilders could do 20-set arm sessions, drop sets stacked on supersets, and still grow, because the drugs were doing the building. Naturally, they credited the training. They thanked the volume and the pump. They were wrong. They were growing from the testosterone, the trenbolone, and the dianabol. The workout was a costume. But naturals watched them, copied them, and have spent decades running enhanced protocols and wondering why nothing happens. Here is what nobody told you. Enhanced lifters grow independent of training. The drugs build muscle whether the session was smart or idiotic. You do not have that luxury. A natural needs every advantage the body will give: heavy weight, low reps, maximum tension, minimal fatigue. The 8-12 range isn't wrong. It is just suboptimal, for natural and enhanced alike. Stop copying drug users. Their rules were never written for you.

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• Aug 5, 20262.6x their median

  Which type of exercise is better for improving cardiometabolic health: aerobic training or resistance training? The answer: They are complementary. Our new meta-analysis indicates that aerobic and resistance training provide distinct benefits that work together to produce a synergistic effect on cardiometabolic health. Bottom line: It doesn't have to be an either-or decision. Do both. Kudos to @alexbatrakoulis for spearheading the paper 💪 https://t.co/vtSOFMxOPb

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• Jul 15, 20262.4x their median

  Research indicates that short inter-set rest intervals (≤60 seconds) can compromise muscle hypertrophy, while resting longer than ~90–120 seconds does not seem to further enhance muscle growth. In practice, however, most people regulate their rest intervals subjectively instead of timing them. How does this affect muscle development? Interestingly, no previous study investigated the topic. Until now... Led by my doctoral student @ae.mohan, we randomized resistance-trained men and women to an 8-week lower-body resistance training program using either a fixed 2–3-minute inter-set rest interval or a self-selected rest condition in which participants initiated each subsequent set when they felt ready (just preprinted on SportRxiv: https://t.co/DRF460FRgv). To ensure that self-selected rest intervals reflected perceived recovery rather than external distractions, participants were not permitted to use mobile devices or converse with others during training sessions. After 8-weeks, both groups achieved similar gains in muscle hypertrophy, strength, and local muscular endurance. However, the fixed-rest group completed their workouts in 29% less time than the self-selected group (average rest intervals: 2.4 vs. 3.7 minutes, respectively). That’s particularly striking because we didn’t allow participants to talk or use their phones. In a real-world gym environment, those distractions would almost certainly make self-selected rest periods even longer. Couple of takeaways. First, these findings reinforce the idea that resting longer than about 2 minutes between sets doesn’t appear to provide any additional muscle-building benefit. Second, for those who are short on time, actively timing rest intervals seems to be a practical strategy. Given that lack of time is consistently cited as the leading barrier to exercise participation, simply setting a timer between sets may help improve workout efficiency—and ultimately, adherence to resistance training. As always, a huge shout-out to my graduate students for bringing this research to fruition. Their dedication and hard work are the driving force behind our productivity 💪

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• Jun 20, 20262.1x their median

  New research shows that high-load (8–12RM) and low-load (20–30RM) training performed to failure produced similar increases in biceps tendon thickness. These findings challenge the common belief that heavy loads are necessary for tendon adaptation and instead support the idea that intensity of effort—not load magnitude—may be the key stimulus for tendon remodeling. Nice work from the lab of @jploenneke https://t.co/ewTBPEL5oR

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• Aug 7, 20261.8x their median

  Energy balance is the primary determinant of changes in body weight. To lose weight, an energy deficit must be established. From a dietary standpoint, this is generally best accomplished by reducing energy intake from fat and/or carbohydrate while maintaining a relatively high protein intake to help preserve lean mass. Cardio is commonly recommended as an adjunct to dietary restriction to enhance fat loss. However, there has been considerable debate as to whether moderate-intensity continuous training or high-intensity interval training is superior in this regard. Our group conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to help answer this question (https://t.co/u6gyEOI1mY). Pooled results from 54 studies indicated that both interval training and MICT reduced body fat, with little evidence that either approach was meaningfully superior for improving overall body composition. HIIT showed a small advantage for reducing absolute fat mass in some analyses, but the magnitude of the difference was modest and of questionable practical significance. Neither HIIT nor MICT produced meaningful changes in fat-free mass. It is important to note that the individual studies showed considerable heterogeneity, with substantial variation in interval protocols, exercise modalities, intervention durations, participant characteristics, and dietary control. These factors should be considered when interpreting the pooled findings and temper the strength of confidence in conclusions. Take-home: Current evidence provides no compelling support for a single “best” form of cardio for fat loss. Both interval and continuous training can produce modest improvements in body composition, so the choice can largely be based on individual preference, tolerance, and time availability. The primary advantage of interval training appears to be its time efficiency rather than an appreciably greater effect on fat loss. Perhaps most importantly, the relatively small absolute amount of fat loss typically achieved through cardio alone reinforces the importance of nutritional control when fat loss is the primary goal. In practical terms, creating a meaningful energy deficit is generally much easier through reducing energy intake than through attempting to expend an equivalent number of calories via exercise.

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• Aug 1, 20261.8x their median

  Very few (legal) supplements have convincing evidence to support their use for increasing muscle mass. Among them, creatine has by far the strongest research base. However, much of this evidence comes from studies measuring fat-free mass, which includes all non-fat tissues—including body water. Because creatine increases body water (potentially outside the muscle cell), changes in fat-free mass may overestimate its true effects on muscle hypertrophy. To address this issue, we conducted a meta-analysis (https://t.co/7pHBNscoU8) examining only studies that assessed muscle hypertrophy using direct imaging techniques (MRI, CT, or ultrasound). Overall, creatine supplementation increased muscle hypertrophy, although the magnitude of the effect was relatively small. There was also some evidence that younger adults derived greater hypertrophic benefits than older adults, although confidence in this finding was limited by the relatively small number of included studies. Take-home message: Creatine supplementation modestly enhances resistance training-induced muscle hypertrophy—it’s one of the few efficacious supps in this regard. However, the additional gains appear considerably smaller than those often inferred from studies reporting increases in whole-body lean mass. Although speculative, the larger effects observed in previous meta-analyses of lean body mass may partly reflect creatine-induced increases in extracellular body water, whereas direct imaging provides a more accurate assessment of true muscle growth. I’d also note there’s substantial interindividual variability in the response to creatine supplementation. Some research suggests that ~30% of individuals may be non-responders, although the exact proportion likely depends on the criteria used to define responsiveness. Genetics may play a role, but habitual diet also appears to be important. Individuals who regularly consume large amounts of meat generally have higher baseline intramuscular creatine stores and thus may experience smaller benefits from supplementation, whereas vegetarians and especially vegans often show more robust responses.

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• Aug 17, 20261.8x their median

  Caffeine is one of the few supplements shown to enhance exercise performance. Effects are observed at doses of 3–6 mg/kg body mass when consumed ~60 mins prior to exercise; higher amounts don't seem to enhance results and tend to be associated with more side effects. https://t.co/Gu89YgSR7U

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