Ok, first of all I don’t think he actually grew this much ‘muscle’ in a month. Most of it must have been water weight and muscle regain. Also, I like to train frequently and so reducing frequency after a few weeks does not make sense to me. For recovery? My ass! Your body has to be able to withstand more than such a low volume routine!
Then again…
Some people on his site seem to have gained a significant amount of muscle with the routine (mostly beginners of course) and I have not seen any really scientific critic on Ferris’ claims in the comments. Most just say that it is impossible to gain that amount of muscle in a month, but were is the proof for that statement?
I would say that protein synthesis upregulation is limited to 24-48 hours after training, so it is not possible for such a low volume and frequency of training to have such grand effects on muscle growth. But….it is very hard to directly measure muscle growth correctly and most studies don’t use very accurate methods to measure it. This means that it might still be possible for muscle growth to continue past 48 hours after a bout of exercise.
First I would also have said that slow training is inferior to normal tempo, but Anatoly blew that idea out of the water a bit with his post on slow training…
Soooo, could someone come up with intelligent responses to Tim Ferris’ Experiment? (Of all the forums on the net this should be the best place to get some thought-trough comments, IMO)
Ferriss and his books are crap. There’s not much to it.
You just have to look at the claims in his book:
* How to prevent fat gain while bingeing (X-mas, holidays, weekends)
* How to increase fat-loss 300% with a few bags of ice
* How Tim gained 34 pounds of muscle in 28 days, without steroids, and in four hours of total gym time
* How to sleep 2 hours per day and feel fully rested
* How to produce 15-minute female orgasms
* How to triple testosterone and double sperm count
* How to go from running 5 kilometers to 50 kilometers in 12 weeks
* How to reverse “permanent” injuries
* How to add 150+ pounds to your lifts in 6 months
* How to pay for a beach vacation with one hospital visit
he is a master con-artist, i truly commend him for the way he has managed to manipulate the minds of his fans
Ferriss and his books are crap. There’s not much to it.
You just have to look at the claims in his book:
* How to prevent fat gain while bingeing (X-mas, holidays, weekends)
* How to increase fat-loss 300% with a few bags of ice
* How Tim gained 34 pounds of muscle in 28 days, without steroids, and in four hours of total gym time
* How to sleep 2 hours per day and feel fully rested
* How to produce 15-minute female orgasms
* How to triple testosterone and double sperm count
* How to go from running 5 kilometers to 50 kilometers in 12 weeks
* How to reverse “permanent” injuries
* How to add 150+ pounds to your lifts in 6 months
* How to pay for a beach vacation with one hospital visit
he is a master con-artist, i truly commend him for the way he has managed to manipulate the minds of his fans
Uhmm, I am convinced that Ferris makes some outragous claims too about several things, but that is not the point of his discussion. This is only about the experiment.
Like the claims Kevin Trudeau (hope he burns in Hell for the nonsense he makes people believe) on HCG injections for fat loss, we still need to PROVE him wrong. It is not enough that we don’t like the person that tells the lies. We need to prove his ideas don’t work. Thankfully there are studies done on HCG injection and fat loss that don’t show any difference between the diet with or without HCG and there are studies that show that strength training can prevent LBM loss will very low calorie dieting and even fasting.
So in this case I would like to focus on two questions:
1. How do we “know” it is impossible to gain more than 1-2lbs of muscle mass per week?
and…
2. How do we know that this way of weight training will not produce results? (I am not talking about 34lbs in 4 weeks here, just realistic mass gain)
The article you posted focusses on maximum Genetic Muscular Potential and presents equations and models for expected rates of growth calculated with data and experiences recieved from natural bodybuilders. The problem with this can be found in Lyle’s article:
“Both Casey and Martin’s equations are based on top level natural bodybuilders, the group that you’d expect to surpass such limits if they existed (and who’s dedication and work ethic is pretty hard to question). Mine and Alan’s are based on years of experience in the field. If a massive number of exceptions to the above existed, someone would have seen them by now.”
AND:
“To quote from Casey’s site:
Over the years I’ve also received many emails full of unsubstantiated claims, hostile remarks and even personal attacks because of the information presented here. But in that time, though many have told me they’re easily going to surpass these predictions, I haven ‘t received any legitimate, verifiable statistics that significantly exceed the results of the equations presented above …including correspondence with some of today’s top-ranked drug-free bodybuilders upon which the equations were partially based.”
->The problem is that, even though it is unlikely, it only takes one exception to prove them wrong and they know it. Like a black swan if you know what I mean. In this case you could say that the Collorado experiment and Tim Ferris’ experiment prove them wrong by exception in terms of maximum growth rate. Also, these quotes from Lyles article only state the projected maximum genetic muscular potential (MGMP) has not been disproven yet, but seeing Ferris was under his projected MGMP at the end of the experiment so this is not important in this discussion.
PS: please leave your personal opinion/rant about Ferris at the door. It does not contribute to a good discussion IMO.
Ferriss and his books are crap. There’s not much to it.
You just have to look at the claims in his book:
* How to prevent fat gain while bingeing (X-mas, holidays, weekends)
* How to increase fat-loss 300% with a few bags of ice
* How Tim gained 34 pounds of muscle in 28 days, without steroids, and in four hours of total gym time
* How to sleep 2 hours per day and feel fully rested
* How to produce 15-minute female orgasms
* How to triple testosterone and double sperm count
* How to go from running 5 kilometers to 50 kilometers in 12 weeks
* How to reverse “permanent” injuries
* How to add 150+ pounds to your lifts in 6 months
* How to pay for a beach vacation with one hospital visit
he is a master con-artist, i truly commend him for the way he has managed to manipulate the minds of his fans
Uhmm, I am convinced that Ferris makes some outragous claims too about several things, but that is not the point of his discussion. This is only about the experiment.
Like the claims Kevin Trudeau (hope he burns in Hell for the nonsense he makes people believe) on HCG injections for fat loss, we still need to PROVE him wrong. It is not enough that we don’t like the person that tells the lies. We need to prove his ideas don’t work. Thankfully there are studies done on HCG injection and fat loss that don’t show any difference between the diet with or without HCG and there are studies that show that strength training can prevent LBM loss will very low calorie dieting and even fasting.
So in this case I would like to focus on two questions:
1. How do we “know” it is impossible to gain more than 1-2lbs of muscle mass per week?
and…
2. How do we know that this way of weight training will not produce results? (I am not talking about 34lbs in 4 weeks here, just realistic mass gain)
The article you posted focusses on maximum Genetic Muscular Potential and presents equations and models for expected rates of growth calculated with data and experiences recieved from natural bodybuilders. The problem with this can be found in Lyle’s article:
“Both Casey and Martin’s equations are based on top level natural bodybuilders, the group that you’d expect to surpass such limits if they existed (and who’s dedication and work ethic is pretty hard to question). Mine and Alan’s are based on years of experience in the field. If a massive number of exceptions to the above existed, someone would have seen them by now.”
AND:
“To quote from Casey’s site:
Over the years I’ve also received many emails full of unsubstantiated claims, hostile remarks and even personal attacks because of the information presented here. But in that time, though many have told me they’re easily going to surpass these predictions, I haven ‘t received any legitimate, verifiable statistics that significantly exceed the results of the equations presented above …including correspondence with some of today’s top-ranked drug-free bodybuilders upon which the equations were partially based.”
->The problem is that, even though it is unlikely, it only takes one exception to prove them wrong and they know it. Like a black swan if you know what I mean. In this case you could say that the Collorado experiment and Tim Ferris’ experiment prove them wrong by exception in terms of maximum growth rate. Also, these quotes from Lyles article only state the projected maximum genetic muscular potential (MGMP) has not been disproven yet, but seeing Ferris was under his projected MGMP at the end of the experiment so this is not important in this discussion.
PS: please leave your personal opinion/rant about Ferris at the door. It does not contribute to a good discussion IMO.
A general rule in integrated chemistry and biology is that there is ALWAYS an exception. Just like you’ll be skimming down the periodic table and you’ll have some element that totally deviates from the other ones in its respective group. Point is, there are going to be outliers- on Lyle’s forum, Martin notes some few who have surpassed their genetic potential and calls them “freaks”.
So just because you find someone who’s an outlier, it doesn’t “prove them wrong”.
So this is what i don’t get, his whole experiment is essentially an anecdote. A well crafted one, yet still an anecdote. ONE. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out if Tim’s experiment duplicated the Colorado experiment: just regaining muscle mass that has been previously lost. And this special circumstance is not relevant to what Lyle writes about rates of gains.
And my “opinion” is relevant because it is important to note that he tries to “con” his way out of accepted scientific methods so much it hurts:
“Charting the progress on my latest experiment, I’d dropped from 11.9% to 10.2% bodyfat, a 14% reduction of the total fat on my body, in 14 days.”
“Not to speculate, I tested the effect of fructose in two tests, the first during a no-fructose diet (no juice, no fruit) and the second after one week of consuming 14 ounces—about 1.5 large glasses—of pulp-free orange juice upon waking and before bed. The orange juice was the only thing distinguishing diets A and B. The changes were incredible.”
He most surtainly duplicated the Colorado experiment and that his methodology not so scientific, but that does not answer my questions.
1. How do we know it is biologicaly impossible to gain more than 1-2lbs of muscle mass per week?
and…
2. How do we know that this way of weight training (infrequent and slow) will not produce results?
A general rule in integrated chemistry and biology is that there is ALWAYS an exception. Just like you’ll be skimming down the periodic table and you’ll have some element that totally deviates from the other ones in its respective group. Point is, there are going to be outliers- on Lyle’s forum, Martin notes some few who have surpassed their genetic potential and calls them “freaks”.
So just because you find someone who’s an outlier, it doesn’t “prove them wrong”.
Actually I was not talking about the models Lyle presented. I meant that the rule/hypothesis that it is impossible to gain more than 2lbs of muscle per week is disproven by an exception. Models are, as you said, not disproven by one exception/outliner, although if your model is more wrong than right you might have to think about adjusting it.
I hope people know that this is not the first time people had made claims of gaining 30lbs and such in a short time. Mark Rippittoe had something similar to say about one of his clients which kind of verged on the impossible and his philosophy is exactly the opposite of HIT. And you will read a lot of these on T-nation. So I don’t think it is the program per se or we should focus too much on the program side.
I think in beginners you can put a lot of muscle with less fat gain. And I think this is true if someone who has been lifting for a while comes back after a long layoff and has lost a lot of weight. So that might be a factor here. Casey has a similar story.
And I don’t think we should put too much faith on whatever he says. He knows how to sell his stuff for sure.
About the 2lb, I think it not that you can’t put more , but that you will be gaining more fat in the process. And mumford says there are some exceptions out there. But I have no idea where it came from.
I hope people know that this is not the first time people had made claims of gaining 30lbs and such in a short time. Mark Rippittoe had something similar to say about one of his clients which kind of verged on the impossible and his philosophy is exactly the opposite of HIT. And you will read a lot of these on T-nation. So I don’t think it is the program per se or we should focus too much on the program side.
I think in beginners you can put a lot of muscle with less fat gain. And I think this is true if someone who has been lifting for a while comes back after a long layoff and has lost a lot of weight. So that might be a factor here. Casey has a similar story.
And I don’t think we should put too much faith on whatever he says. He knows how to sell his stuff for sure.
About the 2lb, I think it not that you can’t put more , but that you will be gaining more fat in the process. And mumford says there are some exceptions out there. But I have no idea where it came from.
You are right, there are more people that made these ‘over the top’ claims about growth rate. I am not really familiar with Mark Rippetoe. I looked his name up on google, but I can’t find the protocol he used for the gains you mentioned. What style of training did he use?
I don’t put much faith in Ferris either, nor do I trust all those claims on T-nation. They always have some new supplement stack to sell. Ferris’ experiment, and especially the comments, just made me think.
A lot of guys that posted comments on Ferris’ site just typed: THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE! YOU’RE A FRAUD!. Amusing as it may be to read Ferris being hammered time and time again, these are not good arguments. Also, there some trainees and trainers that backed up his claims in the comment section.
PS: Some HIT dude called Drew Baye also commented that it was pretty normal for his trainees to experience radical growth as beginners. I always wonder why a lot of HIT experts expect people to believe them when they themselfs don’t look that impressive or are even really fat.
You are right, there are more people that made these ‘over the top’ claims about growth rate. I am not really familiar with Mark Rippetoe. I looked his name up on google, but I can’t find the protocol he used for the gains you mentioned. What style of training did he use?
You live under a rock or what? He popularized the whole 5 reps thing, wrote the popular the starting strength book. Some good info.
There is a thread in Lyle Mcdonald forum where they both get into a mess over this kid who gained so much strength and muscle.
I think we will see a lot of people posting back their results. Some might be legit, some a bit exxagerated.
If indeed the colorado experiment was true or this is true, you would have a seen a lot of huge guys in the HIT forums and people won’t be complaining about not gaining size in their forums. But what I see is adding a day with Not to failure workout and such bcos people weren’t gaining size.
I remember in some place Bryan was talking about muscle growth top speed.
I just don’t remember where it was
edit:
found this:
Lyle M: What he actually said on the HST forum was: “Theoretically, with heavy drug use, a human could probably put on 20 pounds in 4 weeks. That same person could probably put on 60-100 pounds in 12 months. I have never personally seen anyone do this though.”
You are right, there are more people that made these ‘over the top’ claims about growth rate. I am not really familiar with Mark Rippetoe. I looked his name up on google, but I can’t find the protocol he used for the gains you mentioned. What style of training did he use?
You live under a rock or what? He popularized the whole 5 reps thing, wrote the popular the starting strength book. Some good info.
There is a thread in Lyle Mcdonald forum where they both get into a mess over this kid who gained so much strength and muscle.
I think we will see a lot of people posting back their results. Some might be legit, some a bit exxagerated.
If indeed the colorado experiment was true or this is true, you would have a seen a lot of huge guys in the HIT forums and people won’t be complaining about not gaining size in their forums. But what I see is adding a day with Not to failure workout and such bcos people weren’t gaining size.
Ok so we can’t really disprove his claims of rapid muscle growth by showing that it is biologically impossible to gain so much “mass” in a month, because other people have done it before with other training methods. Off course it is clear that Ferris also gained al lot of water weight that he now claims is pure muscle, but he never lied about this technic in his other experiments.
Too bad, I was looking forward to expose a con man by discrediting his claims by disproving them. Then again, we can still look at his training method and compare it’s muscle building results to other methods.
IMO There are some aspects of his training routine I think are important: Linear Load progression: There is more than enough evidence too say progressive overload this works, although some studies indicate that alternating between weights works better. I haven’t seen any studies explaining why this works better though. If someone knows some studies that might explain this I would like to read hem.
abbreivated: Volume seems to work well for a lot of people, but so do abbreivated routines. For instance Rippetoe’s routines are also abbreivated according to some people and seem to provide good results.
infrequent: High frequency seems to work best according to some studies, but Split routines have been used with succes too by some people and could be called infrequent stimulation. So I guess the jury is still out.
slow moving/light weights: There are studies that show that this method can result in significant muscle mass gains, but I haven’t seen any studies that show this method being superior to normal (heavy and fast) weight training.
I don’t think most people will question the effectiveness of the first two aspects, so IMO criticism should be focussed on the last two aspects, because I have not seen any studies that show superiority or inferiority of the aspects/methods over standard training.
If someone has, please post them…
Ok so we can’t really disprove his claims of rapid muscle growth by showing that it is biologically impossible to gain so much “mass” in a month, because other people have done it before with other training methods. Off course it is clear that Ferris also gained al lot of water weight that he now claims is pure muscle, but he never lied about this technic in his other experiments
First when some one makes these unheard of claims, the burden is on him to prove it rather than for us disprove it. And most people who have done had some vested interests in it. So don’t just blindly believe whatever they say. It is like the super natural thing. There are lot of people who say they have some powers but none could prove it when tested experimentally.
34 lbs of muscle in 28 days by Tim Ferris is a bit too much to be believe. Rippitoe’s claims are a bit more realistic, like 2.8 lbs in a month.
Ok so we can’t really disprove his claims of rapid muscle growth by showing that it is biologically impossible to gain so much “mass” in a month, because other people have done it before with other training methods. Off course it is clear that Ferris also gained al lot of water weight that he now claims is pure muscle, but he never lied about this technic in his other experiments
First when some one makes these unheard of claims, the burden is on him to prove it rather than for us disprove it. And most people who have done had some vested interests in it. So don’t just blindly believe whatever they say. It is like the super natural thing. There are lot of people who say they have some powers but none could prove it when tested experimentally.
34 lbs of muscle in 28 days by Tim Ferris is a bit too much to be believe. Rippitoe’s claims are a bit more realistic, like 2.8 lbs in a month.
I never said I believe him. His 34 lbs in 28 days is, indeed like you said, too much to believe. It is clear to me that he dehydrated, dieted and detrained before the experiment. Also, it could be that he did it in more time than he says he did, because he did not provide properly verifiable data and someone independently verifying his data/claims. Needless to say: I don’t trust him.
I started this thread to provide proof for the claims from critics that it is impossible to gain so much muscle mass on such a routine in such a short time. This “anti-claim” needs to be proven too and it makes critically thinking people look ignorant and biased when they don’t provide conclusive evidence with their own claim. Ferris knows this and uses it to his advantage on his site and in his 4hb book. Lack of disproving evidence makes his claims look credible to naive people looking for a shortcut.
I don’t want people to believe crap. I don’t want to believe crap myself. IMO it does not help anyone and eventually only has a negative impact. I couldn’t care less about Ferris. I DO care about the people he is making believe (possible) crap and the impact it will have on their believe systems. Making claims like Ferris does is not harmless to naive people. Then again, making people believe that what he did is impossible without providing evidence is not harmless eihter when it turns out this claim is not correct, so critics need to make sure they are correct and provide evidence to back up their claims too.
Evidence has been posted showing it is very unlikely to gain muscle mass this fast based on statistics, but possible in some cases. Now, can we provide evidence showing that the critics are right about their claim that it is impossible to do what Ferris (and others) claims he did?
In 1999, I was a gold medalist at the Sanshou (Chinese kickboxing) national championships in the 165-lb. weight class (here is a video sample of Sanshou). This is perhaps the most controversial accomplishment in the 4HWW, as I make it clear:
I arrived the on-site at 187 lbs., weighed in at 165 lbs., and stepped on the platform to compete the next morning weighing 193 lb
He really knows how to manipulate water in his body. If he can gain 28 lbs of fat free mass in 24 hours, how hard it is to gain 38 lbs in 4 weeks?
And honestly, his routine is not anything new. People have tried those and more and still looked the same.
In 1999, I was a gold medalist at the Sanshou (Chinese kickboxing) national championships in the 165-lb. weight class (here is a video sample of Sanshou). This is perhaps the most controversial accomplishment in the 4HWW, as I make it clear:
I arrived the on-site at 187 lbs., weighed in at 165 lbs., and stepped on the platform to compete the next morning weighing 193 lb
He really knows how to manipulate water in his body. If he can gain 28 lbs of fat free mass in 24 hours, how hard it is to gain 38 lbs in 4 weeks?
And honestly, his routine is not anything new. People have tried those and more and still looked the same.
An alternative explanation. Now we are getting somewhere! Can you give some examples with photos of this kind of extreme water manipulation? I have trouble believing Ferris on his word about this too.
Could water manipulation also explain the results from the Colorado Experiment? Or do you think the ones that did the data collection were smarter than that?
