Research

Hormonal

Acute post-exercise myofibrillar protein synthesis (MPS) rates measured in untrained individuals are not correlated with long-term resistance training-induced muscle hypertrophy.

Do not use your acute muscle protein synthesis response (or how 'pumped' you feel) to predict your long-term muscle growth potential. High acute MPS does not guarantee high hypertrophy, and low acute MPS does not mean you won't grow. Focus on consistent progressive overload over 16+ weeks rather than optimizing for the immediate post-workout metabolic spike.

GoodRefutesHIGH confidence
We conclude that acute measures of MPS following an initial exposure to RE in novices are not correlated with muscle hypertrophy following chronic RT.
Cameron J. Mitchell et al. · PLoS ONE · 2014

Why this rating

Randomized controlled trial with a relatively large sample size (n=23) for this type of invasive measurement, using gold-standard MRI and stable isotope techniques.

Source

Acute Post-Exercise Myofibrillar Protein Synthesis Is Not Correlated with Resistance Training-Induced Muscle Hypertrophy in Young Men

Cameron J. Mitchell et al. · PLoS ONE · 2014

DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0089431

rct · n=23Cited 205×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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