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The new issue of MASS is here! You can see the full table of contents over at @strongerbyscience , but I just wanted to share a thought I had while writing one of my articles this month.

A recent study by Camargo and colleagues (PMID: 34567366) examined the effects of a block of hypertrophy training followed by a block of strength training, versus a block of strength training followed by a block of hypertrophy training.

Conventional thinking would suggest that the order of hypertrophy --> strength should have produced larger strength gains (you build more muscle, and then you strengthen the muscle you've recently built), but strength gains were similar between groups. That's in keeping with other similar studies (PMID: 26670986 and 19057409).

I think the most important factor is time. Most training studies are 8-16 weeks long, and an experienced lifter is unlikely to build enough muscle in 4-8 weeks to really move the needle. Rather, it's probably more productive to focus on training with sufficient volume to accumulate more muscle over time (i.e. over the time span of years). A single 1-3 month block of hypertrophy training probably isn't going to have much of an effect.

On the topic of hypertrophy, a recent study that got a lot of press (PMID: 33241958) suggested that a 3-week strength block potentiated the effects of subsequent hypertrophy training. I expressed some skepticism about that on the SBS pod (Episode 51), and the study I reviewed this month in MASS reinforces that skepticism: biceps, triceps, and quad hypertrophy were all similar between groups. That's consistent with a recent systematic review, suggesting that periodization doesn't have much of an effect on hypertrophy (DOI: 10.1016/j.scispo.2017.09.005)