Research
Hormonal
Resistance training induces an acute increase in myostatin expression followed by a chronic adaptive decrease in basal levels, facilitating hypertrophy.
When you lift weights, your body temporarily increases myostatin to manage muscle remodeling. Over weeks of consistent training, your baseline myostatin levels drop, allowing for greater muscle growth. Don't be confused by studies showing increased myostatin; this is often an acute response to the stress of exercise.
ModerateQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
Taken together, these data suggest resistance exercise may induce an acute increase in myostatin activity to promote cellular remodelling... followed by a chronic adaptive response of decreased basal expression... facilitating a hypertrophic phenotype.
Why this rating
Based on mixed human studies and animal models; timing of sampling affects results.
Source
The central role of myostatin in skeletal muscle and whole body homeostasis
Bradley Elliott et al. · Acta Physiologica · 2012
DOI 10.1111/j.1748-1716.2012.02423.x
narrative_reviewCited 181×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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