Ep 342 - New Data: Does Growth Really Drive Strength Gains?

Iron Culture presented by MASS

The MASS Crew

Sports & Recreation, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 827 Ratings

🗓️ 27 August 2025

⏱️ 89 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of Iron Culture, hosts Eric Trexler and Eric Helms discuss various topics including the ongoing debate about the relationship between muscle growth and strength gains. They discuss brand new findings from the largest and longest-running study on resistance training, explore the implications of "apparent" sex differences in strength gains, and emphasize the need for nuanced statistical analysis in understanding the factors that contribute to strength gains and observed sex differences.

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Chapters
00:00 Intro
09:10 The Debate on Muscle Size and Strength
12:30 New Research on Muscle Strength and Size
20:45 Exploring Sex Differences in Muscle Training
26:40 The Hierarchy of Evidence in Research
32:00 Relationships Between Strength And Muscle Size
36:40 Lifting For Sport: History And Changing Cultural Norms
39:00 Back To The Study Results (Understanding Sex Differences in Strength Gains)
42:15 Nuances of Statistical Analysis: Relationships Between Strength And Muscle Size
54:10 Aside About Collegiate Sports In USA
56:50 Causal Discovery Analysis in Strength Research
1:08:00 Summary and Conclusions: The Role of Muscle Growth in Strength Gains
1:21:45 Listener Question: Sample Sizes in Exercise Science
1:27:10 Outro

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Iron Culture. It is me, Eric Trexler. I'm here with the Dr. Eric Helms. It's Monday night. It's 7 p.m. We are live on YouTube. You know when it's Monday. You know when it's 7 p.m. You got a live episode of Iron Culture. That's how we do. Except for the weeks when we don't. Sometimes we do some pre-recorded gems. Last week was one of those gems. So it has been a while. Helms, how are we doing, man?
0:29.2	We're doing great. I literally just yesterday got back from Melbourne. I was there for the Ultimate Physique Conference hosted by our good friends at JPS Health and Fitness.
0:40.2	It was a great time.
0:41.8	It was my people.
0:44.0	We talked about bodybuilding.
0:45.7	We talked about coaching bodybuilding.
0:47.5	We talked about training for bodybuilding.
0:49.2	And you guessed that we talked about nutrition for what do you think, Tracks, bodybuilding.
0:57.2	That's on brand. So just a big bodybuilding party was some of the best and brightest in the industry um i guess my invitation
1:03.0	got lost in the mail lord knows i love to travel i go everywhere i'm asked and so uh jokes on you guys
1:09.8	jokes on you that's what I have to say.
1:11.9	So awesome.
1:12.9	Yeah.
1:13.0	Two things on that front treks.
1:15.0	Yeah.
1:16.2	One.
1:16.9	Just to put it out there, they definitely would have invited more folks from other places all
1:22.0	around the world, like of course yourself, because you love to travel, and we all know that.
1:25.8	Yeah.
1:26.0	But it was definitely a little more of a regional focus conference,
1:30.1	smaller target audience, lower ticket price.
1:33.1	So we had mostly the best and the brightest from like, you know,
	...

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