See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/371379370

Can lizards become alligators? Muscle fiber type and other factors that may
influence (or not) hypertrophy responsiveness after resistance training

Article in The Journal of Physiology · June 2023

DOI: 10.1113/JP284867

CITATIONS READS

0 440

1 author:

João Pedro Nunes

Edith Cowan University
85 PUBLICATIONS 955 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Active Aging Longitudinal Study View project

All content following this page was uploaded by João Pedro Nunes on 08 June 2023.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 The Journal of Physiology

https://jp.msubmit.net

JP-JC-2023-284867R1

Title: Can lizards become alligators? Muscle fiber type and other factors
that may influence (or not) hypertrophy responsiveness after resistance
training

Authors: João Pedro Nunes

Author Conflict: No competing interests declared

Author Contribution: João Pedro Nunes: Conception or design of the

work; Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual
content; Final approval of the version to be published; Agreement to be
accountable for all aspects of the work.

Dual Publication: N/A

Funding: N/A

Disclaimer: This is a confidential document.

Journal of Physiology
Can lizards become alligators? Muscle fiber type and other factors that may influence (or
not) hypertrophy responsiveness after resistance training

Author: João Pedro Nunes1,2,*.

Affiliations:
1. Metabolism, Nutrition, and Exercise Laboratory. Physical Education and Sport Center, Londrina State
University. Londrina, Brazil;
2. School of Medical and Health Sciences, Edith Cowan University. Joondalup, Australia.

*Correspondence: J.P. Nunes, PhD candidate. School of Medical and Health Sciences, Room 19.127.
Edith Cowan University. Joondalup, Australia. [email protected]

Running title: Resistance training hypertrophy responsiveness.

Words: 1378. Refs: 5, plus Van Vossel et al.'s article.
Keywords: Resistance training; Muscle Hypertrophy; Responsiveness.
Journal Club
"Those born to be lizards will never be alligators"1 is a Brazilian slang used for gym practitioners as
an analogy referring to the idea that non/low-responder individuals for muscle size gains will never get the
muscle sizes like those high-responders with big muscles. Is that supported by research? Are there inherent
factors that distinguish individuals that may or may not substantially improve muscle size with resistance
training (RT)? In the recent work titled "Can muscle typology explain the inter-individual variability in
resistance training adaptations?", published in the Journal of Physiology, Van Vossel et al. (2023)
investigated whether individual muscle fiber-type predominance (type I or type II) affects RT responses.
This article contained results of two experiments that examined the effects of fiber-type predominance on
(study 1) prolonged acute responses to an RT session and (study 2) chronic adaptations to an RT program.
For the acute and chronic experiments, respectively, 36 and 50 healthy untrained individuals had their
vastus lateralis, gastrocnemius medialis, and soleus muscles examined for intramuscular carnosine content via
proton-MRI as an estimate of muscle fiber type predominance. The carnosine concentration of each muscle
was converted to a z-score relative to reference values, and the mean of z-scores of the three muscles was
used to classify subjects as type-I predominant (z-score ≤ -0.5; slow-twitch fiber typology, ST), intermediate
(z-score between -0.5 and +0.5), or type-II predominant (z-score ≥ +0.5; fast-twitch fiber typology, FT).
In study 1, 11 ST and 10 FT individuals completed three RT sessions with 40%, 60%, or 80% of
1RM to failure (3 sets of knee extension + 3 sets of knee flexion). The authors analyzed acute increases in
femoral artery blood flow during 2-h after each session and detected that FT had longer and higher
changes than the ST group, especially after the 60%1RM session – (and due to that, this load was selected
for the subsequent RT program experiment). The pronounced increase in blood flow was hypothesized to
favor FT to have more hypertrophy in the long term because greater post-exercise blood flow is posited to
lead to higher muscle protein synthesis rates. Also, FT individuals could be suggested to have a greater
whole-muscle hypertrophic potential than ST because type-II fibers are larger than type-I fibers and
generally increase more following traditional RT.
For study 2, in another sample, ST and FT participants (n=11/10) underwent a 10-week RT
composed of unilateral knee extension, knee flexion, elbow flexion, and elbow extension exercises at 3-4
sets of 60% of 1RM to failure. Each participant trained 2x or 3x a week in the left or right limbs, and this
was done to explore whether the weekly frequency could affect the training responses of ST and FT
individuals differently. Quadriceps femoris, hamstrings, biceps brachii, and triceps brachii muscles were
assessed before and after training using MRI, and CSA of type-I and type-II fibers of vastus lateralis were
obtained via biopsy. After training, both groups had similar increases in muscle volume (average of
all muscles measured: ST = 9.5%; FT = 9.4%) and 1RM performance (average of all exercises trained:
ST = 36.7%; FT = 35.8%), but no significant changes were noted for type-I fiber CSA (average of both legs:
ST = 3.5%; FT = 1.5%) and type-II fiber CSA (average of both legs: ST = 2.4%; FT = 0.3%).
When combining ST and FT groups, participants showed greater muscle hypertrophy into 3x/week
compared to 2x/week training due to the greater weekly set volume. No interaction was observed for
muscle typology (ST; FT) and training frequency (2x/week; 3x/week) for any outcome, indicating that fiber
type predominance does not impact how sessions have to be scheduled during the week. Despite the similar
adaptations, the ST participants did ~25% greater total volume-load (sets × load × repetitions) than FT
individuals, a result of the additional repetitions they had to do to reach the momentary failure every set.
Such results reinforce the concept that the number of weekly sets (close to failure) is related to muscular
hypertrophy; however, the accumulate volume-load has to be interpreted with caution when relating it to
muscular adaptations while analyzing participants with different strength-endurance backgrounds (Dankel
et al., 2017). These results of Van Vossel et al. (2023) also highlight that some individuals have to perform
more repetitions within the same set (leading to a higher volume-load) than others to achieve the same
degree of muscle stress to drive hypertrophy. In practical application terms, those with a higher strength-
endurance capacity are suggested to be attentive with loads selected and train within lower repetition zones,
where it is easier to get closer to failure and propitiate the desired stimulus for hypertrophy.
The greater amount of repetitions performed by the ST participants is a consequence of the larger
proportion of type-I fibers that are more resistant to fatigue they have. The distinct fiber type determined by
the carnosine content technique was confirmed in the biopsies done in the vastus lateralis (area occupied by
type-I fibers: ST = 47%; FT = 38%; p = 0.05), but remained unknown for the other trained muscles.
However, a limitation was that the carnosine content technique could explain only ~53% (r = 0.73) of the
fiber type predominance, so 6 out of 11 of the participants of the ST group were classified as type-I muscle
fiber predominant, but their vastus lateralis area was actually composed of ≥50% type-II fibers (see Figure
4E of the original article). It is possible that at broader limits, subjects with muscles with large proportions of
type-I fibers (e.g., >70%) present less hypertrophy than those type-II predominant individuals with lower
levels of type-I fibers (e.g., <30%), as hypothesized by the authors. Such an assumption remains to be tested.
Van Vossel et al. (2023) highlighted other studies that have demonstrated that individuals with
higher percentages of type-II fibers at baseline had greater hypertrophy (e.g., (Haun et al., 2019)), but only
when RT was performed to a fixed number of repetitions to a standard %1RM. In such cases, low-responder
individuals possessed a greater proportion of type-I fibers, thus greater tolerance to fatigue, and would be
completing sets too far from failure, which led to sub-optimal muscular adaptations (i.e., less than high-
responder individuals). Together, these results suggest that not all high-responders are type-II fiber
predominant, but perhaps having more type-II fibers increases a bit the odds of being a high-responder to
getting bigger muscles (Haun et al., 2019). More studies with larger samples analyzing these aspects under
both ways of classification (ST vs. FT; and low- vs. high-responders) are needed. Nonetheless, given that
most individuals have balanced proportions of muscle fiber types, other factors seem to explain more the
inter-individual variability and the responsiveness to hypertrophy following RT. In a recent review paper,
Roberts et al. (2018) indicated that high-responder individuals tend to have increased capacity for muscle
satellite cell proliferation, myonuclear addition, and ribosome biogenesis, as well as higher levels of
baseline muscle androgen receptor, and a "favorable genetic" profile.
Finally, Van Vossel et al. (2023) reported a positive correlation (r = 0.78) between the magnitude of
hypertrophy of both limbs, indicating that those who were high-responder to the 3x/week RT program in
one limb were also high-responder following the lower volume, 2x/week condition, in the other limb. It
appears that obtaining higher responses to RT depends more on intrinsic factors, and manipulating RT
variables is not much relevant to alter this scenario, as indicated by Damas et al. (2019). This is also
supported by our recent study (Nunes et al., 2021), in which, after 12 weeks of RT, we categorized
responders and non-responders as those who had changes in whole-body muscle mass above and below
the "responsiveness cut-off point" (two times the standard error of measurement), and analyzed them again
after additional 12 weeks of training with doubled training volume. All the responders continued gaining
muscle mass, and the non-responders did not increase muscle mass significantly with 24 weeks of RT.
The study of Van Vossel et al. (2023) adds an important piece to the puzzle of understanding the
factors that explain differential responsiveness to RT. The literature still needs to advance to find (a)
physiological characteristics that distinguish low- and high-responders to muscle hypertrophy, and (b)
solutions on diet, supplementation, training, or recovery strategies for those struggling to improve muscle size.

References
• Van Vossel, K., Hardeel, J., Van de Casteele, F., Van der Stede, T., Weyns, A., Boone, J., Blemker, S.
S., Lievens, E., & Derave, W. (2023). Can muscle typology explain the inter-individual variability in
resistance training adaptations? Journal of Physiology, ahead of print.
Damas, F., Angleri, V., Phillips, S. M., Witard, O. C., Ugrinowitsch, C., Santanielo, N., Soligon, S. D.,
Costa, L. A. R., Lixandrão, M. E., Conceição, M. S., & Libardi, C. A. (2019). Myofibrillar protein
synthesis and muscle hypertrophy individualized responses to systematically changing resistance training
 variables in trained young men. Journal of Applied Physiology, 127(3), 806–815.
Dankel, S. J., Jessee, M. B., Mattocks, K. T., Mouser, J. G., Counts, B. R., Buckner, S. L., & Loenneke, J.
P. (2017). Training to fatigue: The answer for standardization when assessing muscle hypertrophy?
Sports Medicine, 47(6), 1021–1027.
Haun, C. T., Vann, C. G., Mobley, C. B., Osburn, S. C., Mumford, P. W., Roberson, P. A., Romero, M.
A., Fox, C. D., Parry, H. A., Kavazis, A. N., Moon, J. R., Young, K. C., & Roberts, M. D. (2019). Pre-
training skeletal muscle fiber size and predominant fiber type best predict hypertrophic responses to 6
weeks of resistance training in previously trained young men. Frontiers in Physiology, 10, 297.
Nunes, J. P., Pina, F. L. C., Ribeiro, A. S., Cunha, P. M., Kassiano, W., Costa, B. D. V., Kunevaliki, G.,
Nascimento, M. A., Carneiro, N. H., Venturini, D., Barbosa, D. S., Silva, A. M., Mayhew, J. L.,
Sardinha, L. B., & Cyrino, E. S. (2021). Responsiveness to muscle mass gain following 12 and 24 weeks
of resistance training in older women. Aging Clinical and Experimental Research, 33(4), 1071–1078.
Roberts, M. D., Haun, C. T., Mobley, C. B., Mumford, P. W., Romero, M. A., Roberson, P. A., Vann, C.
G., & McCarthy, J. P. (2018). Physiological differences between low versus high skeletal muscle
hypertrophic responders to resistance exercise training: Current perspectives and future research
directions. Frontiers in Physiology, 9, 834.

Acknowledgments: JPN would like to thank the Editor-in-Chief and the authors for consenting to this article.
Conflict of interests: None. Funding: None. | 1“Quem nasceu pra ser lagartixa nunca vai ser jacaré” - in
Portuguese; disseminated by Prof Dilmar Pinto Guedes.

View publication stats