Mixed
Pre-training bone characteristics (bone mineral content, bone area, shoulder/hip widths) do not meaningfully predict the magnitude of appendicular lean tissue mass hypertrophy following 10-12 weeks of resistance training in untrained adults.
Do not let your bone structure (shoulder width, hip width, or bone density) dictate your expectations for muscle growth. While larger bones are associated with more muscle at rest, they do not predict how much muscle you will gain from training. Focus on progressive overload and consistency; your skeletal frame is not a limiting factor for hypertrophy potential.
These findings do not support a meaningful role of pre-training bone characteristics in influencing the lean tissue mass adaptations to shorter-term resistance training.
Why this rating
Large cohort (n=119), diverse age/sex range, rigorous Bayesian statistical modeling controlling for regression to the mean, though DXA is an indirect measure of muscle.
Source
Resistance training-induced appendicular lean tissue mass changes are largely unrelated to pre-training bone characteristics in a larger cohort of untrained adults
Dakota Tiede et al. · bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025
DOI 10.1101/2025.05.27.656407
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