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Most people don't truly understand the effects of inflammation and the benefits/consequences it has on muscle growth. Let’s get to the bottom of this mystery and talk about how inflammation kills (and actually helps) your gains.
1. Inflammation Actually Helps Your Muscle Gains
Before we start going into why inflammation is bad and keeping you from maximizing your swoleness we need to take a pit stop and acknowledge that inflammation is actually important and some inflammation is likely essential for eliciting muscle growth and adaptation. There have been several studies that show that some of the mechanisms that regulate muscle growth might rely on inflammation, so we shouldn’t jump on the “inflammation is bad” bandwagon too fast. Furthermore, when it comes to muscle repair, inflammation also plays a pretty critical role there too! So the “in the weeds” science seems to indicate that there are reasons why inflammation might be helpful for muscle growth. A recent study done in humans seems to support this. In one study of active, young men, taking a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory for 8 weeks reduced resistance training induced muscle growth by about 50%. So what can we learn from this? Inflammation is likely a key part of the muscle growth and repair process and that long term use of anti-inflammatories may blunt your growth response to training.
2. Inflammation Prevents You from Training with High Frequency
There are some reasons, some very valid reasons, that inflammation is crushing your gains as well. The first one is it is keeping you from training frequently.
Inflammation is one of the contributors to DOMS and joint and muscle aches and pains. We also know that accumulating training volume is one of the biggest components of muscle hypertrophy (aka gains) so if debilitating muscle soreness is limiting your training volume by limiting how often you can train, then inflammation might be crushing your gains. Now this doesn’t mean you should just use anti-inflammatories to not get sore (because that doesn’t really work). What it means is that your training should not be aimed at eliciting a massive inflammatory response.
3. Inflammation Prevents You from Training Your Hardest
Just like soreness and lack of recovery from inflammation can impact how frequently you train, it may also reduce the intensity with which you can train. While there is some debate about the exact role intensity plays in eliciting growth, it is very clear that it does matter. There is a level of intensity that is needed to optimize muscle growth. The goal here isn’t to train so hard you are going to elicit a massive inflammatory response and then trample it with an over the counter medication or treatment. The goal is to optimize your training such that you are not getting a massive inflammatory response.
4. Too Much inflammation Too Often Hurts Gains
One of the things that we know is bad for muscle growth is excessive inflammation, this is the main reason for the last two points but I want to elaborate on that here. If you have chronically elevated inflammation say goodbye to your gains. There is some evidence that as you age, inflammation plays a role in muscle loss, even if you are physically active.
Inflammation is not a good thing or a bad thing. It is just a thing.
Inflammation is a critical part of muscle growth and adaptation to training. In fact, if you lift weights and take anti-inflammatories the whole time you are likely limiting your gains, by a lot. However, there are some reasons that you should try and not let inflammation get out of control. It can limit the frequency in which you train, the intensity that you train at, and if you have higher levels of inflammation around all the time it can crush your gains. You need to find ways to get a little bit of training induced inflammation, but not so much you can’t train. You also don’t want to have inflammation increased for extended periods.
GD
1. Inflammation Actually Helps Your Muscle Gains
Before we start going into why inflammation is bad and keeping you from maximizing your swoleness we need to take a pit stop and acknowledge that inflammation is actually important and some inflammation is likely essential for eliciting muscle growth and adaptation. There have been several studies that show that some of the mechanisms that regulate muscle growth might rely on inflammation, so we shouldn’t jump on the “inflammation is bad” bandwagon too fast. Furthermore, when it comes to muscle repair, inflammation also plays a pretty critical role there too! So the “in the weeds” science seems to indicate that there are reasons why inflammation might be helpful for muscle growth. A recent study done in humans seems to support this. In one study of active, young men, taking a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory for 8 weeks reduced resistance training induced muscle growth by about 50%. So what can we learn from this? Inflammation is likely a key part of the muscle growth and repair process and that long term use of anti-inflammatories may blunt your growth response to training.
2. Inflammation Prevents You from Training with High Frequency
There are some reasons, some very valid reasons, that inflammation is crushing your gains as well. The first one is it is keeping you from training frequently.
Inflammation is one of the contributors to DOMS and joint and muscle aches and pains. We also know that accumulating training volume is one of the biggest components of muscle hypertrophy (aka gains) so if debilitating muscle soreness is limiting your training volume by limiting how often you can train, then inflammation might be crushing your gains. Now this doesn’t mean you should just use anti-inflammatories to not get sore (because that doesn’t really work). What it means is that your training should not be aimed at eliciting a massive inflammatory response.
3. Inflammation Prevents You from Training Your Hardest
Just like soreness and lack of recovery from inflammation can impact how frequently you train, it may also reduce the intensity with which you can train. While there is some debate about the exact role intensity plays in eliciting growth, it is very clear that it does matter. There is a level of intensity that is needed to optimize muscle growth. The goal here isn’t to train so hard you are going to elicit a massive inflammatory response and then trample it with an over the counter medication or treatment. The goal is to optimize your training such that you are not getting a massive inflammatory response.
4. Too Much inflammation Too Often Hurts Gains
One of the things that we know is bad for muscle growth is excessive inflammation, this is the main reason for the last two points but I want to elaborate on that here. If you have chronically elevated inflammation say goodbye to your gains. There is some evidence that as you age, inflammation plays a role in muscle loss, even if you are physically active.
Inflammation is not a good thing or a bad thing. It is just a thing.
Inflammation is a critical part of muscle growth and adaptation to training. In fact, if you lift weights and take anti-inflammatories the whole time you are likely limiting your gains, by a lot. However, there are some reasons that you should try and not let inflammation get out of control. It can limit the frequency in which you train, the intensity that you train at, and if you have higher levels of inflammation around all the time it can crush your gains. You need to find ways to get a little bit of training induced inflammation, but not so much you can’t train. You also don’t want to have inflammation increased for extended periods.
GD
