How muscles grow when you lift weights and drink protein
Influence of exercise contraction mode and protein supplementation on human skeletal muscle satellite cell content and muscle fiber growth.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Placebo + eccentric training caused myonuclei accretion in fast-twitch fibers—without protein or concentric movement.
Everyone assumes protein + lifting up is the only way to add nuclei, but here, sugar water + slow lowering did it too—suggesting unknown biological triggers.
Practical Takeaways
If you want bigger, stronger legs for sports or powerlifting, focus on concentric-dominant lifts (like leg presses or knee extensions with explosive up motion) and take 20g whey within 30 minutes post-workout.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Placebo + eccentric training caused myonuclei accretion in fast-twitch fibers—without protein or concentric movement.
Everyone assumes protein + lifting up is the only way to add nuclei, but here, sugar water + slow lowering did it too—suggesting unknown biological triggers.
Practical Takeaways
If you want bigger, stronger legs for sports or powerlifting, focus on concentric-dominant lifts (like leg presses or knee extensions with explosive up motion) and take 20g whey within 30 minutes post-workout.
Publication
Journal
Journal of applied physiology
Year
2014
Authors
J. Farup, S. Rahbek, Simon Riis, M. Vendelbo, F. Paoli, K. Vissing
Related Content
Claims (7)
Resistance training to muscular failure induces equivalent hypertrophy in both slow-twitch (type I) and fast-twitch (type II) muscle fibers, regardless of load or repetition range.
When young men did leg extensions with a slow upward motion and drank a protein shake right after, their fast-twitch muscle fibers got noticeably bigger—but this didn’t happen if they did the slow downward motion or drank sugar water instead.
Doing exercises where you push the weight up (concentric) makes more muscle repair cells grow than doing exercises where you lower the weight slowly (eccentric), at least in young men training for 12 weeks.
When the whole leg got bigger from training, it was because the fast-twitch muscle fibers got larger—but only if the men did the upward lifting motion. If they did the slow lowering motion, the leg got bigger for other reasons, not because the fibers grew.
Some men gained more nuclei inside their fast-twitch muscle fibers when they drank protein and lifted up, while others gained them when they did the slow lowering motion—even without protein—showing that adding nuclei doesn’t always go hand-in-hand with muscle growth.