Why Some People Get Bigger Muscles Than Others
Muscle Transcriptional Networks Linked to Resistance Exercise Training Hypertrophic Response Heterogeneity.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Baseline gene expression predicted hypertrophy better than training-induced changes.
Common belief is that muscle growth comes from the body’s response to exercise—but this study shows the pre-training state is a stronger predictor.
Practical Takeaways
If you’re not seeing muscle gains despite consistent training, consider your recovery, sleep, and inflammation levels—your baseline biology may be signaling low responsiveness.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Surprising Findings
Baseline gene expression predicted hypertrophy better than training-induced changes.
Common belief is that muscle growth comes from the body’s response to exercise—but this study shows the pre-training state is a stronger predictor.
Practical Takeaways
If you’re not seeing muscle gains despite consistent training, consider your recovery, sleep, and inflammation levels—your baseline biology may be signaling low responsiveness.
Publication
Journal
Physiological genomics
Year
2021
Authors
K. Lavin, M. Bell, J. McAdam, Bailey D. Peck, R. G. Walton, S. Windham, S. Tuggle, D. Long, P. Kern, C. Peterson, M. Bamman
Related Content
Claims (7)
Individual hypertrophic responsiveness to resistance training exhibits moderate inter-muscle correlation, but a substantial proportion of variability is attributable to non-exercise-specific biological factors.
People’s muscles before they start lifting weights already have different gene activity patterns, and those patterns seem to predict how much their muscles will grow after training.
Muscles that are already primed with certain immune system signals before training tend to grow more after lifting weights, as if the immune system helps muscles respond better to exercise.
Even if your muscles don’t get much bigger from lifting weights, your body still improves how it uses energy, like making your muscles better at burning fuel efficiently.
Lifting weights seems to turn down genes involved in how cells edit their genetic instructions, possibly helping muscles function more efficiently as they age.