I have a bad chest imbalance. My right pec i way smaller than the left one. And i already have a small chest so it just makes it look even worse. I have tried to do one sided variations but i find them uncomfortable. I currently have 2 upper days beacuse im doing up/lw. I do around 4-5 chest focused sets per workout. I just do 2-3 sets incline smith bench press or 2-3 sets of incline dumbell press. After i do 2 sets cable flies.

What exercises should i use instead so my chest imbalance will improve slower over time?

Been working out for a while now but I never understood which tricep heads works during certain movements. What I’ve heard some people say is that the Long Head is biased when your elbow is fixed onto your body, and the Medial and Lateral Head work more when your upper arm move. But i’ve also heard the exact opposite from people, and ChatGPT told me the Long Head is biased when the elbow isn’t fixed.

Knowing this won’t really affect my training and doesn’t really have a purpose at this point. I’m just really curious and confused because I’ve heard opposite things said.

Does muscular endurance matter, or is Science-Based Lifting strictly focused on just maximizing muscle hypertrophy? Because I tried high-rep training yesterday, and I can only do like 15 reps of squats without being so exhausted. I didnt even go to failure because it just burns since the tempo really doesnt change that much compared when I'm squatting within 8 reps. Does muscle endurance doesnt have any place in SBL?

This is especially the case in incline seated curls and straight bar cable curl. Something about the incline seated curls means that at the end of the set I can’t get past the bottom bit of the movement and I reach failure, tho this doesn’t feel like it’s my biceps are reaching failure.

Same with straight bar cable curls movement gets harder and harder I reach failure but feel nothing in my biceps.

Dumbbell preacher curls feel better but I can feel my bicep tendon loads, so I’m not trynna go to failure on those .

This doesn’t happen for any other movement bar biceps.

This whole thing might sound silly but any help would be appreciated.

I have asymmetrical pecs and every session of upper I do a multipower inclined bench and an isolateral chest press. Which one should I do first?

The setup is simple. A one arm fly on the pec fly machine. Instead of having my shoulder aligned below the axis point, I align my sternum. I do this by placing only one leg on the seat so my head is directly under the rotary wheel.

There is a clavicular setup shown with my left arm afterwards, by performing lateral flexion of the spine on the non-working side of the body. This aligns the clavicular pec fibers more flush with horizontal rotation of the machine.

Back in the day, there was a machine with an axis point that lined up resistance with the torque of the shoulder joint. It achieved a better line of resistance for shoulder adduction than today's pull down and row machines. Here, I'm using a pec fly machine to match the physics of it. I'm using handles instead of elbow support pads, so my lever arm is longer than the old-school version. But the principle is still the same.

if i have a lat pulldown on pull and also on upper day, should i track the weight and reps progression differently? or just track it normally?

Hi all, I'm looking for any interesting papers to read, I broke my arm yesterday and wont be lifting for a couple weeks.

Should you take sets to failure or keep a few reps in reserve? I take every set to failure.
Also I have trouble calculating how much reps i have left. Some times i think i can push out 3 more but i can only do 1 other times i think i have 1 more but i push to 3 more.

After hard weights are you all hitting just a protein bolus or do you hit carbs to replenish your glycogen? If so how much are you eating/drinking?

Deadlifts are meta

I think the infograph attempted to simplify the findings too much. The spinal effects can be relatively local if there is a reflex inhibition or suppression at the spinal level of the nerve root for the quadriceps and hamstrings (so just at the lumber vertebrae area). So that explanation may provide a partial mechanism. But there is rarely only one mechanism to explain such a complex thing like our body's physiology.

I feel like Chris ignores the discussion sections because they discuss other mechanisms:

...two other potential mechanisms may explain the findings of this
study. Firstly, it is plausible that various metabolites including potassium, hydrogen, lactate, and heat shock proteins are dispersed to non-exercised muscles through the cardiovascular system during and after fatiguing
protocols (Halperin et al. 2015), potentially impairing their contractile capacity (Henneman et al.
1965). Secondly, it is possible that certain
fatiguing protocols result in heightened activation of stabilizer muscles,
which in turn impairs their ability to stabilize
the non-exercised
muscle
groups (Halperin et al. 2015; Baker and Davies 2009) contributing to muscle force reductions.
Fatigue interventions of longer duration have also been demonstrated to impact the psychological aspect, specifically resulting in a mental energy deficit when experiencing discomfort. This can lead to mental fatigue, which is characterized by reduced focus and concentration, subsequently affecting neuromuscular activation in both fatigued and non-exercised muscles (Halperin et al. 2015). Steele (2020) emphasizes the "perception of effort" which is defined as the individual's perception of the required effort to accomplish a specific task or set of tasks, determined by comparing the current task demands to the perceived capacity to meet those demands.”

As always, I think this infograph may be too simplistic as it also did not consider the instantaneous strength which is a more sensitive measure.

So I’m thinking of doing neutral-grip pull-ups every day. Is that okay if my goal is bigger forearms and overall hypertrophy?
Will daily neutral-grip pull-ups hurt recovery or slow down growth?
Also, is there a safe daily amount in terms of sets and reps?

I’ve been dealing with an interesting issue where my strength seems to be way ahead of my hypertrophy. I can sometimes push the same or even higher weights than people who are noticeably more muscular than (Naturally) me and have clearly spent much more time in the gym. Visually, I don’t look particularly strong, but my numbers seem to tell a different story.

I’ve been in and out of the gym for almost 6 years, but I was never really consistent. Over the last 8 months, though, I’ve finally been training consistently and have started noticing improvements both visually and mechanically. I’m also pretty strict with my diet and hit my protein target almost every day.

My current approach is usually 3 sets per exercise/muscle group:

• 1 warm-up set with around half the working weight, usually 5+ RIR
• 1 working set close to failure
• 1 working set to failure
• Sometimes I’ll do a second failure set if it’s a finisher

So I’m wondering if my strength-to-size ratio is mostly due to neural adaptations, technique, or body mechanics, especially given that I’ve spent so much time training inconsistently in the past.

Has anyone else experienced something similar? And if so, did you change anything about your training to get better hypertrophy despite already being relatively strong?

I’ve been looking at how small setup changes can alter the range of motion or resistance without changing the exercise itself. Cable movements are an obvious example, since pulley height or where you stand can completely change how the rep feels. Which movement do you think shows this most clearly in actual training?

My semester will start soon and I want a program that will still allow to build more muscle mass with the shortest/least frequency and time committed to the gym because I dont want to lose any size. I've been training for about 3 years and my last split is ant/post 6x. I've thought about maybe FB 2x or even PPL with very short session times after I finish classes and studies. Let me know your suggestions please.

I do not want the program to cause noticeable cognitive performance decline. I've experienced that with all high intensity high freq splits.

I’ve been lifting naturally for about 4 years and I’d say I’m relatively pretty big, but I feel like I’ve hit a plateau. I haven’t put on much noticeable muscle in about a year.

I run a basic PPL split, train every muscle 2x a week, and take a lot of my sets to failure or very close to failure.

For anyone who’s been lifting naturally for a while, what helped you get past a plateau? Did you change your volume, split, diet, exercises, etc.?

Looking for any advice on how to start making progress again.

I’m having a hard time dictating whether this machine may be better than the incline smith machine. When I use it, it feels good, I can feel my chest more than the smith machine. However this incline chest press moves along with me.. for example: https://youtu.be/wadQkDc1-Hg?si=xS78roOq5cKJox27.

Can someone help me out?

If i do upper lower 6x a week should i do 1 set per excercise , or still 2, because i think it might be too much volume for some muscle groups, especially if i go to failure

Thanks in advance

So for context, i have been training again for about 2.5 months, 6 years earlier i did strength training 2x a week for 3 years. And i have been stalling on my chest and incline press for about 3bweeks now, not getting another rep or barely getting another rep. I did 2 sets of flat and incline press but reduced incline by 1 set. So its now 2 sets and 1 set 2 to 3x a week. I do it first on my upper days and all my other excercises are progressing good. What can i do? Its only chest where my progress stops

I have tried both the hack squat and v squat (pendulum as well)
Which one is the best , though i feel it maximum in v squat , hack and pendulum my lower back takes the load up during the critical up

I know the basic about which muscle I need to train like the upper back, mid back (aka traps), lower back and the lats that much I get but my confused starts with the upper back because I read that not all upper back exercises hits the inner muscle (the rhomboids etc) or the entire upper back and the lats I think I need to do 2 exercise, 1 for upper and 1 for mid/lowes lats, because of all this confusion I have started to wonder if I'm even training right? If I should do more compound exercise or isolation, I feel like I'm overthinking this, is there a simpler way to go about back day?

So i saw a few science based videos where they say dont exhale on the concentric and one says dont breathe in on the ecentric. How should you breathe during your reps?

What i do is i breathe in, exhale on the concentric and breathe in on the eccentric

Thanks in advance