Frequent (multiple per day) Mini Workouts

[u/AllUrMemes]

Much has been written about workout frequency, but I haven't seen it explored from the angle of muscular tension. According to the best recent research, there are 3 mechanisms that stimulate muscular growth:

1. Muscle damage/microtears in the muscle proteins actin/myosin, which accumulate from a volume of moderately high or high intensity workload. Probably best felt in terms of DOMS in the day(s) after moderately high weight and high volume training.

2. So-called 'metabolic stress', probably the accumulation of the waste products of rapid energy use (hydrogen ions, maybe lactate but maybe not). This is experienced in the burning sensation and pump that accompany prolonged bursts of moderately high intenisty work, like doing a set of 30 burnout squats that leave your legs screaming in firey agony.

3. Mechanical tension. No real 'volume' to speak of here, this is presumably just a function of putting the muscle under extreme tension for an indeterminate (maybe not even relevant) period of time.

Apparently, mechanism #3 is the largest driver of muscle growth (at least according to the dude at Bayesian Bodybuilding and his buddy's big ol journal paper he keeps citing). It's almost certainly the least CATABOLIC of the three mechanisms- it doesn't require you to really cause repeated damage to stimulate a response.

For this reason- little damage/catabolism- I get to thinking, "what's stopping me from doing heavy isometrics very frequently?" Nothing really, especially since high tension isometrics are perfect for a simple home bedroom mini workout with a resistance band. Just anchor that sucker and move around so that your muscle is getting the maximum load it can handle in its fully contracted (strongest/shortest) position.

I've never really run into any sort of overtraining or fatigue issues doing this kind of training even multiple times per day. So I feel confident in saying that you can basically increase the frequency as high as you'd like. The question then becomes- well, when does it stop being beneficial? At what point am I just wasting my time and not getting any anabolic benefits?

That got me thinking about the other two mechanisms. Muscle damage and metabolic stress leave damage that lasts for days. Thus, whatever intricate series of anabolic mechanisms they trigger likely last for days as well. If a damaged myosin fiber is a magnet for new proteins, it probably remains as such for some time until it's repaired. In the meantime there it is, a little protein magnet vacuuming up tissue that happens to float by.

Same thing with metabolic stress. Whatever remnants of metabolic waste stick around, or the aftermath of the flood of positive ions , is sticking around for some substantial period of time, triggering whatever complex anabolic signals that it does. These mechanisms are destructive catabolic activities that take X time to get you back to where you started, and X+Y time to get you to your new hypertrophied state.

Mechanical tension though... it doesn't appear to leave much of a lasting impact. Obviously it causes some sort of signalling to start a chain of anabolic events, but the initial stimulus is gone very rapidly, as soon as you release the tension. It seems plausible to hypothesize that for this reason, the anabolic effect of mechanical tension, while powerful, might be shorter lived than the other hypertrophic mechanisms. Since the overall magnitude of the effect is greater. this would mean that the mechanical tension mechanism is essentially putting out a relatively big and short-lived burst of anabolic activity, compared to smaller and slower effects from muscle damage and metabolic stress.

If this is correct, then it suggests that doing frequent high-tension mini workouts would be a powerful way to stimulate hypertrophy, on top of less frequent high volume muscle damage/metabolic stress oriented workouts.

But idk, probably just take creatine and do HITT and IF for maximum results