Compound movements and hormone release

[JAY_WD]

Thought of this last night and couldnt get it out of my head...

As many of you are probably aware that squats and deadlifts increase GH and Testosterone, im curious as to what your thoughts are on this and how many of you (if any) have incorporated these exercises effectively into your workout routines to increase overall muscle mass?

I have always trained legs, however, not religiously unfortunately and my back workout has never included deadlifts.

My main question i would like answered would be...... if squats and deadlifts increase GH and Testosterone, how long would these levels be at their highest and would there be an ideal day/s in the week to perform these exercises to utilise the increased GH and Testosterone for quicker gains on chest, back, shoulders and arms?

Hope this make sense. All comments are welcome.

[Turkish Juicer]

Working small muscle groups with large muscle groups in the same session yields greater results concerning the growth of smaller muscle groups due to elevated levels of anabolic hormones.

[Turkish Juicer]

Want bigger biceps? Use the hormone peak after leg training

Just after you've trained your legs, you have much more testosterone and growth hormone in your blood. If you then train a small muscle group, it'll grow faster. Norwegian sports scientists at Lillehammer University College tested this theory.

The 11 male test subjects that the Norwegians used were aged between 20 and 34 and had never done weight training before. For eleven weeks they had to go to a bodybuilding gym 4 times a week. On two days they trained only their left biceps, doing biceps curls, hammer curls and reverse curls. [A]

On the two other days they trained their legs. The men did leg-presses, leg-extensions and leg-curls. Immediately afterwards they trained their right biceps using the same exercises as they did for their left biceps. [L+A]

The subjects trained using weights for which they could just manage 10 reps. Before, during and just after a training session they drank shakes containing proteins and carbohydrates.

When the researchers studied the men's biceps at the end of the 11 weeks, they saw that the L+A biceps that had been trained after the leg training were all significantly bigger than the A-biceps that had been trained separately from the leg training. What's more, the L+A biceps were stronger than the A-biceps.









Why biceps grow faster if you train them after doing a leg training session first is shown above. After any L+A training session there is more testosterone and growth hormone present in the body than after an A-training.

T-0 = before training; t-1 = after the biceps training; T-2 = after the leg training (in the A group: half an hour after the training; T-3 = half an hour after the training (in the A group: one hour after the training).

Danish researchers showed a decade earlier that biceps grow faster if you train them together with your legs. By the way, the Danes got their subjects to train their biceps first and then their legs. [Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2001 Dec;11(6):347-54.]

The Danish approach may be even more effective than that of the Norwegians, going by other research in which subjects train several muscles in the upper body in different sequences. This research showed that the muscle group you train first grows faster than the muscle groups you train later in the workout.

If you're thinking of experimenting with this approach, then according to a study done at the University of Connecticut, pre-workout nutrition is doubly important. According to this study a carnitine supplement optimises the testosterone uptake by muscle cells.

Source: Eur J Appl Physiol. 2011 Feb 16.

http://www.ergo-log.com/wantbiggerbiceps.html

[Turkish Juicer]

For stronger biceps, train your legs

The best way to develop more strength in your arms is to train them together with a large muscle groups such as the legs. This theory was put forward by sports scientists at Odense University, Denmark, in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports. Training large muscle groups results in anabolic hormone peaks that the smaller muscle groups also benefit from.

The Danes got fourteen students do weight training for nine weeks. One group of students trained only their biceps, at sixty percent of the weight at which they could make one more rep. This was group A. The other group also trained their biceps, but followed this with six sets of ten reps on the leg press. This was group LA.


The students only trained one arm. But the LA group trained both legs.

The bar chart below shows students’ progress in building up strength. AT stands for the trained biceps, AC for the untrained biceps. Both AT and AC refer to the students who only trained their biceps.

LAT = the trained biceps of the students who also trained their legs. LAC = the untrained biceps of the same group.



The white bars represent the progression of the test subjects during the first half of the experiment. The black bars show the progression during the second half.

As you can see, the biceps that the students did not train also became stronger. This is partly due to the hormonal effect of training the other biceps, and partly probably to a mental-neuromuscular effect. It sounds crazy, but muscles also get stronger even if all you do is to think about training those muscles.

Training the legs after training sessions in which you only train a small muscle group therefore speeds up the process of the small muscle group. The Danes think that training large muscle groups induces the body to make more anabolic hormones like testosterone and growth hormone.

The graph below shows the effect of the two different types of training on the production of growth hormone. And when the scientists looked at the concentration of testosterone in the bodybuilders’ bodies, the results were about the same.



Pre stands for the first training the students did, post for the last training.

A test group of fourteen students is small, so the scientists would like to see their research results confirmed in a large study. But despite this the Danes did come up with a recommendation for bodybuilders. "When practising strength training in order to increase strength of the arm muscles, it can be recommended to include training of large muscle groups in order to induce a greater anabolic hormonal response and thereby influence muscle strength to a greater extent", they write in the conclusion of their publication. "Thus, when using a split routine during strength training, it may be an advantage to combine smaller muscle groups (arms, shoulders etc.) with larger muscle groups (chest, back, thighs etc.) to optimise the training effect."

The idea that an optimal strength training should raise your anabolic hormone level as much as possible is no longer confined to the realms of scientific theory. Researchers in New Zealand have already shown that bodybuilders make the most progress on a training schedule that raises their testosterone concentrations most.

Sources: Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2001 Dec;11(6):347-54.

http://www.ergo-log.com/trainyourlegs.html