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Right, perfect. Um All right. So welcome to the first part of the teaching series on sports nutrition. Um Today, in the first session, we're gonna be covering muscle hypertrophy. Um the fundamentals of the training and nutrition aspects of hypertrophy. Um Before I start, I do wanna say that I am with UCL um Sports and Exercise Medicine Society. And I want to thank UCL Lifestyle Medicine Society for hosting me today as well. And of course, a special thanks to Oliver Richard and Courtney Kipps for supervising me on this teaching series. Um Before I start, um I do wanna just tell a little bit of myself. Um Let you know who I am my background and also my academic background. Um give me a few reasons as to why you can trust me on this talk. Um So I'm half German, half French and I moved around my whole life. I did gymnastics and football growing up, which is what kind of spiked my interest for sports medicine. And currently I'm a second year medical student at UCL. Um I did study by Medical Sciences at Kings before where I specialized in metabolism and cardiovascular health and pharmacology. And in line with that, I did a summer fellowship at Oliver Wiard lab last summer where we investigated the role of a novel milk protein in retaining muscle mass and strength during limb immobilization. Um This really is down my alley in the field of research I'm interested in which is metabolic biology and particularly exercise, nutrition and how those are involved in metabolic diseases and their connection to cardiovascular health. But moving on to the actual talk. Now, uh before I start, I do wanna say if there's any issues, if you can't see the slides or anything, do drop a message in the chat. I will be monitoring that. Um But yeah, so just as the outline of the talk, I'm gonna be starting off talking just a little bit about hypertrophy and then we'll be diving into the fundamentals of hypertrophy training, looking at really the key elements of progressive overload. And then on the nutritional aspect, we will be covering the three main macronutrients with special emphasis on protein, which will also involve a critical analysis and then looking at carbs fats and some supplements. So what is muscular hypertrophy? Hypertrophy is an increase in muscle mass and this usually manifests as an increase in muscle size and muscle strength. Now, there are two components really to hypertrophy. The first step normally is sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, which you can see on the right hand side of the diagram and that is where the volume of the cells increases. So it's really essentially the cell just swelling up. And that is usually followed with continuous stimulus by myofibrillar hypertrophy, which you can see in the center. And this is where the number of myofibrils increases. And essentially what's happening here is you're increasing the number of nuclei that are supporting the muscle cell. And that is what gives rise also to the muscle memory effect because one nucleus can only support so much like increase of muscle size. And once you reach the maximum size with the sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, you need to start increasing nuclei to be able to support the increase in size. And that's what happens in myofibrillar hypertrophy. And that remains even when you stop training and you lose muscle, the nuclei remain. And that's what gives rise to the phenomenon of muscle memory which allows you to regain muscle faster afterwards. Um But what then is hypertrophy training? And really there are two components to the training. There is the mechanical stimulus itself that you're getting through progressive overload. But to train properly, you also need adequate recovery and that's for nutrition and rest come in. And on the left hand side, you can just see a graph that really shows the different elements that make up the adaptations to the training. Um And you can see that when you start lifting, you can get a very rapid increase in strength and the initial initial increase in strength is mostly driven by neural adaptations. Essentially, your brain is learning how to activate the muscle fibers. It already has um in two ways. Firstly, to maximally recruit the fibers, it has. And secondly, to recruit all the fibers it has. And that learning curve is what causes the in initial increase in strength. And once the neuro patients taper off, that's where slowly the increase in strength. You see after that is linked to actually the muscle mass increasing. So to be able to get this increase in muscle mass, you need to follow a program of what we call progressive overload. And that has three key components which is intensity duration and frequency. And I will be covering these now and I will be covering a little bit also about repetition range and range of motion and how, what those mean and how they can be incorporated into the training style. So progressive overload is when you over time, increase the load that your muscle is having to work against. And that can be done in one of three ways. Firstly, you can do this by increasing the intensity of your training that can be done by increasing the volume such as adding repetitions weight or sets over time. So every week you're trying to do an extra rep or you're adding a bit of weight to the bar or something like that. And it can also be done usually in conjunction with the effort and that is measured as repetitions in reserve often, which is a measure of the proximity to failure that you're pushing yourself in a given exercise. And an important distinction that I do wanna make is that there's a difference between mechanical failure and muscular failure. The difference being that in mechanical failure, what's happening is that you do the exercise until you can no longer do another repetition using correct form. So in a bicep curl, it would be if you are strictly, I don't know if you can see. But if you, you're strictly maintaining upright posture and really just isolating the bicep to get the dumbbell up. Muscular failure is if despite cheating, you cannot get another repetition. And by cheating, I mean, for example, in a bit of curl again, if you swing the arm a little bit to get the dumb develop up and then you lower it again and then you swing it up a bit and get it down. That's where if, even when you're trying to swing, you can't get it up anymore. That's where you've reached muscular failure. And the importance of differentiating the two is that there's some moves where like bicep curls or some other isolation type movements or pushing yourself into muscular failure is really not that much of an issue. It's not dangerous. But in compound lift, especially like dead lifts, like squats trying to push until muscular failure can be dangerous. Because when you break your form in an in a move that involves so many joints and muscles, you can really injure yourself. And that's the type of movement where sticking to mechanical failure or a fewer partition sh may be the safer way to go and then use the isolation moves to really push all the way and fry the muscle essentially. Um but other than intensity, you can also overload using duration. And this is most commonly done with time under tension. Um And time under tension is a measure of how long the muscle fibers are being activated or contracted for with every repetition really. And therefore the duration of the set and the main way to increase time under tension is to slow down the eccentric. So the lowering part of the movement where you're lengthening the muscle. Um So for a bicycle, it's when you're lowering the dumbbell in a squat, it's when you're squatting down to the floor, uh the slower you go in these, that's part portion of the movement is essentially making it harder for yourself and thereby you're making it harder for your muscles, really creating a greater stimulus um for muscle growth. Um So if, for example, you can, you can incorporate this if you've reached a certain amount of repetitions for weight. And you think, OK, I don't really wanna do more repetitions because I don't like going higher repetitions than that. I feel like it's too early perhaps to be adding more weight. And I don't really wanna add more sets. Well, one way to overload in this case is to just say, ok, I'm gonna stick to the same weight and reps, but I'm just gonna slow down the eccentric and that makes it a lot more difficult and it also can simply, it makes it harder. So you can't lift as heavy loads if you do really slow and controlled eccentric. And in that way for things like squats and dead lifts, that's another way of mitigating injury if you can't lift as heavy because you're making the given weight harder for yourself. Um But the final way is through frequency and that is looking at the number of sets you do per muscle group per workout and per week. So if you wanna increase that, it could be um you know, for you're hitting biceps, um twice a week, two working sets for two exercises every time, that's a total of eight working sets per week. You can increase the frequency by increasing that to nine or 10 working sets per week, for example. Um But that really usually ties in as well with the intensity side of things. Um just a bit more detail about the repetition range. So to train for hypertrophy, really, any repetition range from 5 to 30 will provide a hypertrophy stimulus. Now, it's often said that 8 to 12 reps is the sweet spot. Um But that's not that it's better than five or better than 30 necessarily, it's more when we consider the so called stimulus to fatigue ratio. And then what that's really looking at is for the stimulus you're getting from the exercise you're doing. Are you creating more fatigue than necessary kind of? And um the issue we run into here is that when you're training at really low repetitions at the five rep range, you need to be using heavier loads to kind of max out the five reps in a, on a muscular level. But that means that you're lifting quite heavy loads. And therefore the poor repetition fatigue you get from the weight is quite high. And therefore, so is the risk of injury. Now, if you go to the opposite end of the spectrum, looking at the 30 repetition range, the poor rep fatigue is quite low because the weight is gonna be significantly lighter. But because you need to do so many more reps to actually fatigue the muscle, often you're entering the territory of cardio. So the cardio respiratory system may become the limiting factor. And if not that it's also 30 repetitions is a lot. So you can become mentally exhausted really. And that's a really important thing to keep in mind because if you think back to my first slide, I showed you the graph where I showed that neural adaptation is the first factor causing the increase in strength. And whilst it's not gonna increase your strength as much more later in your training, it's something that contributes every single day, every single time you train to how much power you can put into the workout, how much force you can put into it. Your brain, every time you contract a muscle is telling your muscle to contract. And when you sustain the contraction, it's 10, telling your muscles to sustain the contraction. So if you're becoming mentally exhausted, but you're just saying I'm on 20 I have 10 more repetitions to go. I don't really want to. Your brain is gonna shut off the muscles and you're not gonna be able, you might, I mean, you might be able to, if you like to throw your repetition range. But um in my case, for example, 30 repetitions is too much for me. And when I reach the 20 rep mark and I give an exercise, I'm bored. II don't want to do another repetition. And even though I tell myself, keep going, the drive to the muscles is just reduced because my brain doesn't want to anymore. My brain is exhausted. And so at one point, I can't do another repetition, but that's not mechanical failure. It's also not muscular failure. It's central fatigue, it's mental exhaustion. It's brain failure if you will. And that is something to keep in mind. If you like doing the repetitions, that's great. But if not, you might actually be preventing yourself from pushing yourself as hard as you actually can by choo choosing our petition range that's higher than what is ideal for you. And that's why it's so important to always consider. What style of training do you like best? Um Because essentially the total amount of molecular signal received is really key. Um And so if, as I said, if you're lifting with the lower repetitions, you need heavier weights to reach that threshold of molecular signal. And if you're lifting lower weights, you need more repetitions. And the final factor I just wanna touch on in terms of training is the range of motion. And I know everyone says it to leave your, leave your ego at the door. But it really is a key factor in training if you really want to train for hypertrophy, because the maximum muscle protein synthesis stimulus is achieved in the stretch position of the muscle. So I already told you that time under tension is maximally induced by slowing the eccentric, the lowering portion of the exercise when you're lengthening the muscle fibers. But actually, it's in the stretched position that your muscle fibers will get the most activated. That's why slowing the eccentric is already a great stimulus because you're slowing down the portion where the fibers lengthen and therefore are most prone to the stimulus to injury essentially. Um But it is also when you go all the way to the stretch position that you will recruit all of the muscle fibers. And that is so important because if you are lifting a heavier weight, but you're only doing like you're only going two thirds of the way down because obviously it's the bottom half, that's the most difficult. Well, then you're missing out on a third of the muscle fibers you could be recruiting kind of. Um, so yes, you're lifting heavier loads. The stimulus is great up here. But really, although you're lifting heavier for this portion of the exercise, it's this portion that creates the greatest stimulus. So you're better off lifting lighter weights, which also reduces your risk of injury and going all the way down and then all the way back up, then going two thirds of the way down and missing out on the significant proportion. So it really is, you're better off lifting lighter weights so that you can do the full range of motion, obviously work with your mobility, you know, with squats, some people can't squat all the way down because of ankle or knee mobility issues and that's fine. But to your best ability, try and pick a way that you can really control the eccentric and do the full range of motion so that you're recruiting all the muscle fibers you possibly can. And in terms of injury prevention, that's where rest comes in as well. Um So rest comes in the form of rest periods between the sets. Typically it's around 1.5 to 2.5 minutes. But again, it depends on your training. If you are training in the very low rep, heavy weight, almost strength training domain. Then you may be looking at increasing your rest periods up to five minutes. And if you're in the 30 rep range, doing almost more circuit cell training, then you can do as little as 30 seconds rest. So it really is very individual. Every, you know, different people will recover at different rates between sets as well. So just take this with a pinch of salt, but the average rest times are in 1.5 to 2.5 minutes. Um And then there's also sleep, sleep really is non negotiable because this is where your muscles regenerate. So you can have the perfect gym routine and you're really sticking to it. Nutrition can be on point if you're not sticking to a sleep schedule or taking care of your sleep the way you are your nutrition and your gym training. I don't wanna say it's all for nothing because you're still, you know, health benefits of going to the gym and eating well, but your hypertrophy progress will be significantly hindered if your sleep is not adequate. So this is really, really important and it's also important for injury and fatigue prevention. Now, while sleep helps to regenerate, there are also other ways to mitigate injury and um long term fatigue and this is by implementing regular rest days throughout your um cycle. So for example, if you're training four days a week, that would be three rest days you have in the week. If you do have more than 2 to 3 rest days, optimally, you would not have them all in like one after the other. Because if you're training four days a week, for example, it's nice to at least split it with one rest day in between. So say you can train Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday off Thursday, Friday. So you have a little bit of recovery between the actual training days as well rather than just one long recovery period. And then the fatigue accumulating over the four training days. Um But again, do it as if it's your schedule, of course, and then there's de load weeks. Now de load weeks are perhaps more for intermediate to advanced training training. Um But this is where at the end of a say 8 to 12 week training cycle, you take a week, either completely off or you do a week where you do something else like you go surfing or skiing or hiking or just some other activity. Um You can also still go to the gym but reduce the volume or the weights by 50% to just give your body time to recover. Because the idea of being de load weeks is that if your cycle is say 10 weeks and you're applying the progressive overload approach, which is what you should be doing. If you're trying to get muscle hypertrophy, then we upon week, upon a week, you're pushing yourself harder and harder and harder. And your nervous system is just gonna be exhausted. You're just constantly pushing. It's like everyone wants a vacation after exams. It's kind of the same thing. So you're giving your body a week to just calm down, recover, regenerate so that you can go full power again when you start the next cycle. If you do not take care to rest in all the elements, I've listed in the previous slide, then there's a danger of reaching the territory of overreaching or overtraining. And this is an accumulation of training and or nontraining related stress. Now, overreaching is a temporary decrement in performance and this you can usually recover from in days to weeks. But if even when you reach this point, you choose to keep pushing, that's where it can become dangerous. Um And that's where you can see overtraining, which is a long term decrement of performance capacity. This can take weeks to months to recover from. And the symptoms are very similar to those seen in chronic fatigue or postviral syndrome and also resemble those seen in depression. And really all bodily systems can be affected by this, not just performance, but also just your general physiology, your psychological wellbeing, and also your biochemical immunological and hormonal status. So it's really important that you incorporate rest days and take care to rest properly throughout the training so that you do not accumulate fatigue to the point of overreaching or even overtraining and speaking of recovery, I just wanted to have a quick note on ice baths. I know ice baths are very trendy at the moment and they definitely have their place in different health parameters. But in terms of muscle hypertrophy, try to avoid them, post exercise, it's fine if you do them some other time, that's not related to your exercise. But the reason why I say this is because when you go to the gym and you get the muscle pump, that is because you get vasodilation and you get metabolites being flushed out of the muscle and you get nutrients, oxygen, everything being flushed into the muscle so that the muscle can heal. And this is essentially a state of inflammation and this state of inflammation is also a signal for the muscle synthetic machinery to be activated. So if you take an ice bath right after you've activated this signaling response to get the muscle growing, you're reducing the inflammation and they were actually inhibiting at least partially the stimulus to muscle protein synthesis. So just try not to jump in an ice bath straight after a workout. Um But yeah, incorporate it at any other time of day. If you want, we're moving on to nutrition now. So I'll be covering the three main macronutrients and talking a bit about supplements as well. A protein obviously being the most interesting kind of in the muscle hypertrophy area. So protein is both a stimulus and a substrate for muscle protein synthesis. But beyond that, it also improves immune function and it does seem to help with tolerance to intensify training. Now, there's three key considerations with protein nutrition, there's the dose, the timing and the source. So looking at the dose and timing to facilitate mm an adaptive advantage. You're looking at aiming for around 1.2 to 2 g per kilogram of body weight per day of protein. And this is best distributed over several meals with around 20 to 30 g per meal. Um seemingly being enough to maximally stimulate muscle protein synthesis. Um The graph on the bottom is really just to show the importance of distributing your protein intake throughout the day rather than having one big bolus say at the end of the day um for dinner because as you can see, ingesting 12 g of protein in the morning causes a small increase in in protein balance. And what we're looking at here, the blue line is showing the um when the state is in a net positive protein balance, which means that the body is in an anabolic state building protein. The red line shows negative protein balance, which is when you're actually breaking down muscles, you're in a catabolic state. Um And that is obviously what we're trying to avoid in this scenario. So with a small increase intake of protein of 12 g in the morning, you reach a net positive protein balance for a while and then you're fasting. So the protein intake has been digested, it has been assimilated and you're now entering a catabolic state for muscle protein actually being broken down. Then a 20 g intake spikes the protein balance even more on the positive. But again, with fasting, it drops. So you can see that there's almost a dose dependent increase um in the positive protein balance response to protein intake up to around 30 40 g. But every time you stop the feeding, which obviously you have to, when you're digesting, you will slowly enter a catabolic state. And that's where feeding um with 20 to 30 g of protein multiple times a day. For example, the three meals allows you to maintain a more net positive protein balance than if you just have one big protein meal a day. And we'll be talking about this in a little bit again. Um But in terms of source protein source is also really important because this is kind of what determines the anabolic potential. Um because this is determined by firstly the blood amino acid availability, which depends on the digestion and absorption kinetics of the protein source. Then you have the amino acid delivery to skeletal muscle, which is primarily driven by blood flow immuno uptake immuno acid uptake by skeletal muscle, which is dependent on the amino acid transporters in the muscle cells. And finally, the anabolic cell signaling and this is where the amino acid profile is really important because muscles need a complete amino acid profile. Um and especially the essential amino acids to be able to build a muscle. If you're deficient in one of the amino acids, you're not going to be um really activating synthetic machinery because they want a full amino acid profile. And that's where the essential amino acid profile becomes really important because we cannot synthesize them ourselves. And the losing content is also extremely important because of all the amino acids. Leucine is the one that primarily stimulates and activates the muscle protein synthetic machinery because it activates Mtor C one and Mtor C one is the master regulator of muscle protein synthesis. So if you have leucine in your protein source and the higher the amount of leucine, it seems to a certain extent, the better, the more you will stimulate muscle protein synthesis through nutrition. And on the right hand side, it's really just a comparison of animal and plant protein to show that in all of these elements, animal proteins are simply better, they are more digestible, they are better absorbed. They have always a full essential amino acid profile and they are higher in leucine, especially milk proteins. Now, it doesn't mean that if you're vegan, you can't gain muscle, it's just a bit more difficult. And that's what becomes really important to, especially when you're um trying to get protein from plants to have complementary plant sources of protein. So, in any given meal, because plant protein sources tend to be deficient in one of the essential amino acids. If you have two different sources of plant protein, say beans and chickpeas, um you will have different deficiencies essentially. And so if you have them both at the same time in a meal, one is making up for the deficiency in the other. And that allows you to still get a full amino acid profile. So that shouldn't really be an issue. Um Right now, the big question is there really a cap to protein intake? This is a study published in December 2023 by Trin et al. And they actually suggested that there doesn't really seem to be a cap to protein intake because they found that 100 g of protein resulted in a greater and more prolonged anabolic response than 25 g of protein. But this is really the first study to ever find something like that. A red all in 2013 found that four times 20 g um consumed every three hours elicited the greatest muscle protein synthesis response even greater than consuming two times 40 g. And melanin et al in 2023 showed that muscle protein synthesis increased dose dependently until 30 g. And beyond that, there really was no benefit of consuming more protein. So why are we seeing these discrepancies? Well, firstly, we need to consider the study sample. Trin all used recreationally active men. Whereas melanin et al looked at resistance trained women. And there are two variables here that could really be impacting the results. Firstly, the training status, while recreationally active men were healthy, they had not previously resistance trained before. And as some of you may know, there is a phenomenon of nie gains, which is when somebody has never trained in the gym before and starts progressively overloading with weights, they will grow muscle almost like it doesn't really matter what they do. Um because the stimulus is so novel to the muscle that these signals are just being taken in and being built upon. So the resistance strain, women using mountains in adult study, they have already been exposed to this stimulus for years and so doing a resistance training protocol for a study is nothing novel. The muscle is used to it and it's not creating any new type of signal as it did for the recreationally active men. Now, the other factor to consider is that I use men whereas ma in it, I use women. Now, most studies are done on men. So it is difficult for us today to really distinguish what or if there are big effects uh differences in effects between women and men. But it is another factor to consider. I mean, in women, for example, there's a menstrual cycle that could cause hormonal differences that can impact muscle growth. There's also the difference in testosterone levels and estrogen levels between men and women. Um So these are all things that could really be playing into the differences and results. Now, the second thing to consider is that amino acids have other fs than just skeletal muscle. So travel and all claim that because they didn't see any raised amino acid oxidation rates in 100 g versus 25 g. The amino acids must have been incorporated into the skeletal muscle. But that's not necessarily the case, the amino acids can reside in other tissues like the splanchnic tissues, it can be diverted for synthesis of noncontractile muscle proteins like mitochondrial or sarcoplasmic proteins. And there's also transamination, deamination reactions which are other ways of essentially getting rid of the amino acids. Um So just because the oxidation rates weren't increased, it doesn't mean that it all contributed to muscle growth um or at least little muscle growth. So those are things to really kind of keep in mind when you're reading studies like that, the conclusions are not necessarily always drawn um from, you know, taking all factors into consideration, but moving on uh just quickly to carbohydrates. So, carbohydrates as you probably know, provide energy, they are an immediate source of ATP especially during workout. And this is because you're also an anaerobic source of energy and that is very important during sets because if you think about a set probably lasting no more than 1 to 1.5 minutes, that is a very short period of time that can be covered by an glycolysis to a significant extent, especially if you're pushing yourself hard, the breathing, yes, to control the breathing when you're doing your positions. But there is often a significant proportion of kind of holding your breath to create the pressure and all of that. And so if you have the carbohydrates to provide this anaerobic source of ADP well, great, you can push harder during every set. You can maybe do more repetitions because you have this added energy source. And this is where in more advanced training, intra workout, carbohydrate supplementation may become interesting, especially when you're pushing beyond the 1.5 hour line because that's approximately where glycogen source will start running out. So once the glycogen stores start running out, especially in more exposed to moods like um weight training, you want to replenish the store so that you have this immediate source of at P because you're unlikely to really be using fat for fuel in this scenario. Um But obviously, that's really when the exercise time goes beyond 1.5 hours. But apart from training and performance advantages, carbohydrates also help to improve mood and cortisol cortisol being involved in stress. So again, going into this whole uh resting and recovering side of things, fats are essential for hormonal health. Um they are very important signaling molecules. And this again ties back also to the signals required for muscle protein synthesis, but they're also important for body and joint health. Um So this is again avoiding injury in training and also for sexual health. And this is especially seen um in women, but they're also considered easy calories. I mean, if you compare fats which have nine calories per gram to protein or carbs, which have four calories per gram, that is more than double. And so if you are struggling to increase your caloric intake, you're somebody who burns and you have, you have a fat me uh a fast metabolism, uh you burn calories very easily. Um And you struggle to put on weight, especially when you're trying to gain muscle. Well, rather than trying to stuff yourself with large quantities of carbs and all that, which have to replace, it's easy to just add a bit of fat, which are much more calorie dense and therefore, are less difficult to ingest large amounts of. And another thing to keep in mind is that a study in 2019 by traveling it all again, um found that coingest fat with protein after exercise seemed to increase muscle protein synthesis weight compared to proteins alone. And that appeared to come from the fact that amino acids were better utilized and more amino acids were utilized when you had the coingestion with P. Um And this may be coming back to the idea that pass for signaling molecules. So they may just be helping with um really maximizing the utilization of amino acids. But other than actual nutrition, there's also supplementation which as the name suggests, it's to add on to the nutrition. But protein powder is a big one if you're struggling to meet your protein intake. Um especially if you're on a vegetarian vegan diet. Protein powders can become really, really useful. They're easy. And um yeah, very useful. Then there's caffeine. Caffeine is a um timing dependence supplement. So you want to be consuming caffeine before training, if you choose to, to get the benefits during your training session. And essentially what caffeine allows you to do is it allows you to push harder. It gives you more essentially force and power during the repetition of the sets. But also mentally, your perception of how hard you're pushing is reduced and this is measured as rate of perceived exertion. So with caffeine, it has been shown that you can push harder with the same perception as if you were pushing less hard without caffeine. And so again, that allows you to train harder and therefore get more overload, more stimulus and therefore more signals for muscle protein synthesis. And the final one I wanna touch on is creatine kinase. Now, this one is not time sensitive. So you can take it at any time of day. It doesn't have to be before or after the training. Necessarily. As long as you take it consistently every day, you can find creatine in food sources, but it's on relatively low level. So from a muscle hypertrophy perspective, it is beneficial to be supplementing with it. Usually we say 2 to 5 g a day. Um But the reason why creatin kinase is so interesting is because it reduces the need for anaerobic glycolysis. And this is because creatine kinase with creatinine kinase, you increase your muscles, phosphocreatine stores and fossa creatine donates phosphates to rapidly create ATP and usually this occurs in the first five seconds of an exercise before anaerobic glycolysis can be activated. But if you're increasing your source of PCR, you're increasing the amount of phosphates you can donate. And therefore you're actually prolonging this immediate source of ATP. And once the ATP uh once the PCR has been depleted because you've been loading before and because you're taking the supplements, you're increasing the PCR resynthesis as well. And the reason why this is so beneficial is, as I said, firstly, it increases your exercise capacity because you're increasing your rapid at P source. So you can push harder and for longer. And creat also directly activates muscle hypertrophy. And this is in two ways. Firstly, it stimulates muscle protein synthesis via IGF one. And secondly, it reduces muscle protein breakdown because it is a negative regulator of myostatin and fox. Oh, both of which um promote muscle protein breakdown. So, creatine really helps you both directly by stimulating muscle growth and indirectly by allowing yourself to push harder and therefore increasing the mechanical stimulus. But with all that being said, I do want to stress that everybody is different. So in terms of training and diet and routine, choose what works best for you, choose what you can stick to what you can do consistently and what you enjoy. So just to round things up, um we now hopefully know that muscle hypertrophy is induced by mechanical damage to skeletal muscle cells and appropriate nutrition because nutrition especially leucine is its own signal for muscle protein synthesis. Mechanical damage over time is driven by a progressive overload, which can be modulated by intensity duration and frequency, full range of motion when possible is the best bet for really maximally stimulating muscle growth and rest is where the muscle builds. So this is really, really important. Now, in terms of nutrition, um you should be aiming for over 1 g per kilogram of body weight of protein per day to optimize adaptations. And this would include 20 to 30 g per meal, multiple times a day and carbohydrates for energy and fats for hormones. So, thank you. That's the end of the first presentation. If you have any questions do feel free to unmute or drop something in the chat. Um And otherwise, uh you can go, I do wanna say there will be a feedback survey sent out after this and it would really help me if you could fill it out. So, um yes, thank you. So we have a question here. What time periods spent in the eccentric phase of a rep is most optimal for stimulating muscle hypertrophy. I think it depends on the exercise and it depends on how much you're loading the muscle. But I would say between you're looking to aim over one second centric and usually around three second centric is optimal without dragging it on for too long because at one point it does become too slow. So I would say if you go 22 to 4 seconds is probably what you want to be aiming for. Um And really think about just controlling the, the centric, controlling the movement down. And that is also a really good time to really think about the mind muscle connection. That's some, that's a point where you can think about, am I really feeling the muscle stretching and trying to control um the load down? And that again goes back to the neural adaptation side of things. Um that can help you just recruit the fibers better every time you're um trying to do the exercise essentially. Um I hope that answers your question. Um Thank you. We stop sharing now. Uh