Research

Hormonal

Antioxidant supplementation consistently blunts skeletal muscle hypertrophy and strength gains following resistance or high-intensity training, unlike endurance training where performance may be unaffected.

If you lift weights or do high-intensity intervals, do not take Vitamin C or E supplements. They block the signals your muscles need to grow stronger and larger. Focus on the training itself.

GoodRefutesHIGH confidence
Antioxidant supplementation has been more consistently reported to have deleterious effects on the response to overload stress and high-intensity training, suggesting that remodelling of skeletal muscle following resistance and high-intensity exercise is more dependent on ROS/RNS signalling.
Troy L. Merry et al. · The Journal of Physiology · 2015

Why this rating

Supported by multiple human and rodent studies cited in the review.

Source

Do antioxidant supplements interfere with skeletal muscle adaptation to exercise training?

Troy L. Merry et al. · The Journal of Physiology · 2015

DOI 10.1113/jp270654

narrative_reviewCited 310×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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