u/omrsafetyo — reddlx

Do you track warm ups?

Just curious.

I was thinking about how a coach might keep track of weekly stress, and it occurred to me that I don't often log warmups, though I sometimes record some. But if I was sending my log to a coach I feel like it would be relevant. Like my week 1 might be RPE6 at a weight that in week 4 might not even be a last warmup for RPE8-9. But I wouldn't usually log it in week 4, just consider the RPE and move up accordingly. So it got me thinking there may be some weight, after say 80%, that you should always log as a metric.

So really just a curiousity: do you have a coach, and do you log your warmups (wondering if there is a correlation haha)

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u/omrsafetyo — 10 days ago

▲ 12 r/StrongerByScience

Weekly Net Stimulus Model

Alright, this post is less about WNS and more about the 2019 Figueiredo paper "Revisiting the roles of protein synthesis during skeletal muscle hypertrophy induced by exercise"

Now, I am highly influenced by Greg when it comes to my understanding of things. One thing that Greg has spoken about on many occasions is that whether we're talking about higher rep sets, or higher volumes, or etc., there are other adaptations at play that are favorable that you may be avoiding by going with the low volume, low rep set approaches - mitochondrial density, ribosome biogenesis, etc. And so this is a topic that is always in the back of my mind.

Recently I was having a discussion, which was prompted by the assertion that "3-4 sets once weekly causes maintenance of muscle, but 1 set 2x weekly causes growth in trained lifters."

I had trouble with this idea, and so tried to dig into it. I traced this idea back to a certain blog post, though I'm not entirely sure this is the right post where this idea comes from - at the very least some of the key arguments seem present here.

This idea seems to come from 4 papers in total:

Now, what I find MOST interesting about the claim itself, is the papers chosen to defend it. Part of the claim in the blog is that even though 1 intervention lasted 6 months, they still saw no growth. As short a summary as I can come up with on these papers:

Trappe: Older, untrained men trained 3x per week for 12 weeks performing 3 sets of 10 each session targeting the knee extensors. After 12 weeks, participants were broken into groups that either continued the training intervention (3x10) but dropping the frequency to once per week, or cessated training entirely, for 6 months. At the end of the 6 months at 1x/week, no changes in muscle size was found, whereas the detrain group had a 5% reduction in size.

Bickel: A mix of older, (60-75) and younger (20-35) untrained men resistance trained for 16 weeks, and then were randomly assigned to either a 1/3 volume group, 1/9 volume group for an additional 32 weeks. The training intervention consisted of knee extensors - leg extensions, squat, and leg press - 3 sets of each 3x per week (27 weekly sets in phase 1). In phase 2, the volume was reduced in the 1/3 volume group by reducing training frequency to 1x (9 weekly sets in 1 session), and the 1/9th volume group reduced frequency to 1x and also reduced sets per exercise to 1 (3 weekly sets, 1 session). The younger group saw continued hypertrophy on the 9 sets, and maintenance at 3 sets. Neither older group maintained their size from phase 1.

This second study is interesting, because it showed 3 sets being insufficient even for maintenance (9 as well) in a period of reduced volume in untrained older men, and since Trappe also recruited older men, it suggests this data is likely impacted by age, but the blog author of course doesn't mention this.

Mpampoulis: Looked at untrained females who participated in 12 weeks of training, followed by an additional 12 weeks with either 1 weekly session, or a session every 2 weeks. IIRC there were 4 sets performed per session, and the 1x frequency group maintained, whereas the 1/2x frequency group lost 5-10% of mass and strength.

Notice all these studies are on novices, which has a short period of training, followed by some detraining protocol.

So lastly, we have Hermann 2025. This is the study asserted to be a single set 2x weekly, but if we dig in, it seems it was more like 2-3 sets per muscle group 2x per week. They measured biceps, triceps, and quads, and did several exercises, but only 1 set per exercise, but they did bench press, overhead press, triceps extension, biceps curl, rowing, pull-downs, squats, leg extensions, and leg press. If we count fractional sets (triceps: bench, OHP, + 1 direct set extensions; biceps: row/pull-down + direct set curls; and then quads were all direct sets) this ends up being 2 sets per session for tris/bis, and 3 sets per session for quads. These participants were also all trained as well.

All that out of the way, of course I am not convinced of the assertion here. Now, the assertion was aimed to support the idea that higher frequency is better. Of course we have an apples to avocados comparison here, so lets just dismiss this. But in digging into it I came across the Figueiredo paper.

This paper effectively proposes that rather than a "brick" model, where during a period following RT, we some bricks laid (increased MPS), and then we may see periods of increased MPB (bricks taken away), we could instead consider a system where translation capacity increases over time (and possibly, decreases due to detraining).

I find this argument to be very compelling, especially where it centers around ribosome biogenesis, as Greg has repeatedly mentioned in these conversations. I think it allows for a model that doesn't rely on atrophy happening on very short time-frames, as the WNS model does, and instead perhaps describes a system where 1x frequency may be slightly inferior because a single bout of low-volume resistance training may end up spending energy toward maintaining the actual machinery for MPS, resulting in less net accrual than you might expect from the volume - whereas if you move to 2x frequency perhaps there is less upkeep required, so you see more net accretion. This makes more sense at longer scales, and I do note that the authors in Figure 2 do not show any oscillation in resting MPS due to translational capacity going down, etc., I'm really just speculating that it may be plausible.

And the more I think about this, the more explanatory power it seems to have. For instance, it has been observed (Roznek et al 2002) that in novices a calorie surplus seems to have an advantage, whereas in more advanced lifters the advantage if any is VERY small. My speculation here is that this can be explained by this model, because now we don't just need to consider the energy requirements for new myofibril accretion, but also need to consider energy costs of ribosome biogenesis, and other machinery for increasing translational capacity - on top of the fact that novice lifters are more responsive to training, and can build muscle more quickly, they might have other energetically expensive processes going on to support an anabolic infrastructure in the first place.

I also feel like this model has implications in muscle memory - apart from satellite cell activation, and increased myonuclei, if we consider that we already have a lot of this machinery in place after a period of detraining, it makes sense that it can get "up and running" more quickly to a higher baseline of translational capacity.

Now the question I have is: why isn't this model discussed more? I do see some references to it, but according to pubmed there are only about 29 papers referencing Figueiredo. I wonder if I am missing something obvious.

u/omrsafetyo — 11 days ago

▲ 0 r/HunterXHunter

Does Meruem actually have a nen ability associated with time compression?

I know this question has been asked before, and it seems the consensus is that no, he does not.

However, I want to question this within the scope of the over-arching theme of the Chimera Ant arc. I was watching a TikTok, by @Parzeypanels who points out that Togashi puts a lot of emphasis on the concept of time within the Chimera Ant arc, and with the Chimera Ants as a whole.

We get count-downs to the King's birth and death. A count-down to the palace invasion. There's several deadlines in the arc - such as the 30 day deadline for Gon and Killua to defeat Knuckle and Knov. They have a 10 day deadline to start the invasion. Meleoron has to hold his breath for his ability - and puts time limits on that. Heck, Knuckle's APR is time based, accruing interest every 10 seconds; and if you go bankrupt you have a 30-day forced zetsu penalty. Cheetu has a time-based ability as well (his tag game with a time-limit). And then of course there is the classic Narrator mention that "only 3 minutes have elapsed". Beyond that, we see two instances of characters rapidly aging due to psychological stress, as well as Gon rapidly aging due to a Nen contract.

My idea is that Meruem really embodies the entire idea of compressing time. He is born early - it was initially supposed to be a 30-day gestation, but he was born prematurely. Chimera ants are all bypassing millions of years of natural selection through phagogenesis - and Meruem is the ultimate embodiment of this, being able to absorb Nen abilities through consuming flesh directly. He represents a compression of the learning process - taking hours to topple the greatest masters of Chess, Shogi and other games.

All of this comes to a halt when he meets Komugi. For some reason Komugi is special, and despite Meruem's ability to adapt and learn at an astounding rate, he can never quite catch Komugi in Gungi. I think this is important. I think Komugi represents Meruem's wall - the limit at which his evolutionary compression cannot bypass.

Netero, I feel is an analog to Komugi, but in physical speed. Netero is very interesting, because he embodies the ultimate human ability to dedicate copious time to the learning of a single task - the absolute master of learning the human way. This is of course his decades spent compressing his gratitude into a single punch.

So what evidence is there? Not a lot really, but with the over-all themes of time here, I think its reasonable.

During the fight with Netero it is explicitly mentioned that he "... could barely follow Netero's after-image in the compressed time"
Meruem walks between Netero and Zeno in the millisecond they are distracted by Pitou's activation of Dr Blythe
Zeno mentions to Silva that "I had quite a strange experience, you see it felt as if time was being condensed"

Now, at face value I would not think much of #2. And #1 I could easily pass off as just Meruem having an absolutely supreme ability of perception, and simply assume his perception is dilated, like slowing down a movie to frame-by-frame or some other slow-motion. But the 3rd is where it gets interesting in my opinion. Others have taken this as nothing more than a frame narrative, or a breaking of the 3rd wall in which Zeno is being used to make a meta-joke about the timeline of the invasion itself, and how it is extremely drawn-out, despite only being a few minutes in reality. And I think that works.

** Manga Spoilers (appropriately tagged) **

At least, it works until we get to the Black Whale. We now have Kurapika's >!Emporer's Time - not really a time-specific ability, but compresses Kurapika's lifespan relative to the time spent with the ability active!< as well as >!Tserriednich's Parallel Future - which actually allows him to see 10 seconds into the future and alter the outcome of those events!<

And this is where the idea that time being manipulated becomes a real possibility - an actual Nen ability. >!Tserriednich demonstrates that Nen is capable of distorting and bypassing the linear flow of time.!< Its no longer just some ambiguous potential that Meruem was truly distorting time; its a real possibility with Nen. And when you consider things with that new light, you realize that:

Zeno's "meta joke" may not actually be a joke. When he and Netero experienced Meruem passing between them effortlessly, maybe it wasn't adrenaline that caused their time to dilate from their perspective - surely these two at or near the pinnacle of the world's Nen users have had close encounters with death on countless occasions - so why would Zeno feel the need to tell Silva that he had such a unique experience?
Meruem's time dilation in his fight with Netero may have been a real thing - and he may have actually met another Komugi in Netero - a human who's natural ability, and time spent developing that natural ability simply could not be surpassed - in this case the speed of Netero's prayer - even with his own ability to truly compress time - even with time compressed, all he could observe was the after-image.

To say the least, it seems that this is no longer an impossibility - time alteration is truly a mechanic that exists in-universe. So given the overall theme of time within the Chimera Ant arc, I still find it compelling to think that perhaps Meruem truly could compress time. And I would say the counter-argument would be "what about Pitou - they also experienced something similar during the initial invasion when Netero swats them away." And this is interesting, I agree; but I think perhaps it can also be considered as a proto-ability skin to Meruem's ability. In fact, Meruem remarks that Netero's hand movements are the only movements he cannot keep up with. But in this circumstance, Pitou seems to observe Netero stating "That was a bad move little ant." Which seems to suggest that its not just Netero's prayer that can keep up with Pitou, but Netero himself also seems to be subjected to the time compression or dilation (depending on the perspective). So thinking of Pitou's ability as sort of a proto-ability that Meruem master, you can see that Pitou actually relies on Terpsichora being activated, whereas Meruem has the same ability without the use of a specific hatsu.

And lastly, post-rose Meruem develops Photon - the ability to move at light speed (instantly transport within his photon range). And of course, time and the speed of light are intrinsically linked - the theory of relativity suggests that as speed approaches the speed of light, time dilation reaches its maximum. For a single photon moving at the speed of light, time completely stops. To me this suggests that, since this was a post-rose evolution, the ability was built on some other latent ability, and I strongly suspect this ability was time dilation. The naming of Photon cannot possibly be a coincidence IMO, and strongly suggests to me that the time effects we see surrounding Meruem, and Zeno's joke are due to a real phenomenon, and not simply a meta-joke.

Thoughts?

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u/omrsafetyo — 29 days ago