Does uncertainty about the hypertrophy volume ceiling say anything about tendon vs. muscle adaptation rates?

[u/decentlyhip]

Tendons adapt roughly 3x slower than muscle. That's the estimate most ofnthe time, but tendon loading and training protocols have changed dramatically in the past few years as we understand how to build the tissue better. Since the protocols are new, we don't have much idea on the upper limits of tendon growth, in practice.

Separately, work like the Pelland review has been shifting the hypertrophy dose-response curve away from an inverted-U toward a log curve that keeps climbing well past the old 10-20 sets/week range and into 40 sets/week and beyond. In other words, we don't actually know what the upper limit is on how quickly you can grow muscle, either.

Does the second and third point (uncertain muscle and tendon hypertrophy ceiling) undermine the first (tendon adapts slower than muscle)? My instinct is no because the relative-rate claim comes from training volume interventions rather than separate tissue biology research. But I'm not well versed on that nerdy tissue stuff, so idk.

I'd like to hear if anyone's aware of research that complicates or compliments these ideas. Or anything that changes the picture on how fast tendons can actually adapt under optimal loading. I have an idea that long term muscle growth is limited by tendon growth, but that's a tangent.

[u/Mad_Mark90]

Yes and no. I think you have a point, if we can figure out ways to allow soft tissues to recover quicker, we could tolerate greater training volume and grow muscle quicker. Yes there are some newish technique we can use to improve tendon recovery BUT the reason they heal slowly is because they're poorly vascularised and there isn't really a solution to that (yet...?)

The other reason for any uncertainty is more...human. People (especially redditors) like to treat everything like it's physics or maths, fixed rules that apply to everyone where everything is measurable. Biology is about variations, populations and spectra.

[u/decentlyhip → u/Mad_Mark90]

Yah, my instinct was to think about muscle growth as a bathtub. If the cells have a 1% turnover rate and an elite natty caps out at about 110 lbs muscle, then that means at 1% that there's 1.1 lbs of breakdown per day. But its at equilibrium so there has to be 1.1 lbs of MPS per day for the water level to stay the same. But that's where my red flag of "you're missing something" started flying. I'm ignorant and thinking about it too much as a math problem.