Nucleus Overload Training - Is it Worth Trying?

So there you are, entrenched in the iron. PRs are being smashed all over the place, but yet there's one guy.

You know, that guy... The one who trains the same body part every day. He grabs a curl bar and throws on some 10-pound plates and goes to town.

Related - How to Build Your Own Muscle Building Workout

Over the course of an hour, he's also managed to do preacher curls. If he's going beast mode, he will probably end off with some swinging hammer half curls and then the cable machine.

Six months later, after you've smashed many PRs, you see them at the gym. The same size. Doing the same weights. Over and over.

So there's a relatively new "sensational training method" that you isolate and train one specific muscle for 30 days straight - making you grow.

What Is Nuclei Overload Training?

Mainly known to bring up lagging body parts, nuclei overload training is the new internet sensational training method.

The theory of nucleus overload training is training a body part for a month, you will have more growth. The belief is that if you train a muscle group every single day, the nuclei within that muscle increases and you have a better response.

What Does This Mean for You?

There are solid pieces of evidence that bodybuilders who come from other athletic sports typically have bigger muscles from the movement. For example, a swimmer that starts bodybuilding will have naturally larger lats, shoulders, and traps and a runner will have massive quads and hamstrings.

I'm not a bodybuilder, nor have the ambition to be, but I came from a background in baseball and motocross. My forearms, calves, quads, and back are all my better and stronger parts.

Muscle growth, or hypertrophy comes from breaking your muscles down, your protein synthesis is elevated, and your body shuttles nutrients to your muscles to recover.

Hypertrophy

Muscle hypertrophy is the growth of your skeletal muscle by way of increasing the size of its component cells.

There are two factors that contribute to hypertrophy. These are sarcoplasmic hypertrophy and myofibrillar hypertrophy.

Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy - Increased glycogen storage in your muscles.

Myofibrillar Hypertrophy - Increased myofibril size. This is the rod-like unit of a muscle cell.

Protein Synthesis

When we lift weights, our muscles micro-tear on a cellular level. When the muscle experiences micro-tears, the blood flow to the area increases. This brings the necessary components for repair - through protein synthesis.

This is how your muscle grows.

In order for protein synthesis and growth to occur, there need to be a few things happening.

First, you need to cause the muscle to have an exercise-induced micro-injury. This is what you do when you lift.

Second, naturally occurring hormones - including testosterone and growth hormone - are produced by your pituitary gland.

Lastly, you need to eat right. This means you need a sufficient amount of protein. Proteins are made from amino acids, some synthesized by our bodies, and others which we need to consume in our diet.

Protein synthesis doesn't actually create new cells, it creates a state of hypertrophy. The individual cells increase in size. So, the bigger and stronger the cells are, the more aesthetically pleasing you will look.

Protein synthesis is elevated for a little over 24 hours post-training.

Should You Try Nuclei Overload Training?

Is it bad? No. Is it good? Could be. Is it your magical cure for a lagging body part? Definitely not.

I mean, think about your calves. All of us are doing half bodyweight calf raises every time we walk. How come some people have chicken legs?

The growth from this training theory comes from the acute trauma and then supercompensation of muscle glycogen. The gains are just an illusion.

Seriously, professional research-based bodybuilders don't do this. They stay abreast on the latest and greatest in sports training technology.

Wrapping It Up

If you still want to try this training method, no one is going to stop you. I will say that if you are doing some off the wall training that no one else in the fitness industry has even heard of, it's probably a complete waste of your time.

Progressively overloading your muscles, getting the proper calories and nutrients into your body, and getting enough recovery time is the key to sustainable growth.