Browse evidence-based analysis of health-related claims and assertions
After a long workout, men and women refill their muscle energy stores at the same rate when they both drink the same recovery drink — even though women burn more fat during the workout.
Descriptive
After a workout, drinking a sugary recovery drink makes your blood sugar and insulin spike higher than if you drink nothing — and this happens the same way in men and women.
A drink with sugar, a little protein, and a tiny bit of fat after a workout helps muscles recover energy, but not quite as well as a drink with just sugar.
After a long workout, drinking a sugary sports drink helps your muscles refill their energy stores much faster than not eating anything at all.
Even though barbell curls put more stress on the biceps when they’re stretched out, they don’t make your biceps grow bigger than cable curls — so stretching the muscle under load isn’t enough to guarantee more growth.
Causal
Men and women both gain the same amount of biceps size and strength from preacher curls — whether they use a cable or barbell — so the training works equally well for both sexes.
When you do preacher curls for 10 weeks, your strength in the middle and fully bent positions gets better no matter if you use a cable or barbell — the resistance pattern doesn’t make a difference there.
If you do preacher curls with a barbell — where it’s hardest when your arm is almost straight — you’ll get stronger specifically at that position better than if you use a cable machine where it’s hardest when your arm is bent.
Whether you use a cable machine or a barbell to do preacher curls for 10 weeks, your biceps will grow about the same amount — the exact way you apply resistance doesn’t matter much for muscle size.
Overall, your whole triceps muscle grows more when you do the exercise with your arm overhead—even if you’re not lifting as heavy.
Even the smaller parts of your triceps grow more when you do the exercise with your arm overhead instead of at your side.
When you do triceps exercises with your arm stretched overhead instead of at your side, your triceps muscle grows more—even if you’re lifting lighter weights.
Total training volume, training intensity, and consistency are more significant determinants of muscle hypertrophy than the specific muscle length at which training occurs.
Assertion
The hypertrophic response to training at longer muscle lengths may differ between untrained and trained individuals, but current evidence is insufficient to determine this due to limited data in trained populations.
Muscle hypertrophic responses to training at different lengths may vary across muscle groups due to differences in architecture, biarticulation, and sarcomere number.
Isometric contractions performed at longer muscle lengths produce greater muscle hypertrophy than isometric contractions performed at shorter muscle lengths.
Comparison
When comparing full range of motion to lengthened partials, observed hypertrophy differences may be confounded by differences in peak resistance location, making it difficult to isolate the effect of muscle length alone.
Curling exercises that position the shoulder in extension (lengthening the biceps) produce greater hypertrophy in the biceps brachii compared to exercises that position the shoulder in flexion (shortening the biceps).
Overhead triceps extensions, which place the long head of the triceps at a longer muscle length, produce greater hypertrophy in the long head compared to pushdowns that maintain a shorter length.
Exercises that position biarticulate muscles at longer lengths (via joint angle manipulation) produce greater hypertrophy in those biarticulate muscle heads compared to exercises that place them at shorter lengths.
Training muscles through a full range of motion or lengthened partials produces greater hypertrophy than training through shortened partials, particularly in distal muscle regions.
When resistance is applied such that peak torque occurs at either the longest or shortest muscle length during a movement with identical total range of motion, muscle hypertrophy is not significantly different between conditions.
Individuals with low body fat percentages (<15% for men, <25% for women) exhibit diminished capacity for muscle hypertrophy under caloric maintenance or deficit due to insufficient endogenous energy reserves.
Excessive caloric surplus during muscle-building phases often leads to adipose accumulation that exceeds behavioral motivation for subsequent fat loss, resulting in chronic overfatness.