Hey, athletes! Here is a quick breakdown on Muscle Protein Synthesis, a topic we covered recently on the Garage Gym Athlete Podcast!
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Muscle Protein Synthesis (Transcript)
[00:00:00] Jerred Moon: What’s up, ladies and gentlemen? Jerred moon here from Garage Gym Athlete, and I’m going to be doing a garage gym athlete short. So what we’re doing here in these short videos, is it just taking one concept, maybe from the podcast, expanding on it just a little bit more. So you make sure you know how to understand and implement, and something that we talked about recently is how to gain muscle specifically in that conversation.
We talked about muscle protein synthesis, and I’m not a chemist, I’m a coach, but I want to make sure that you understand muscle protein synthesis in a very, a useful type way. Like how can you use it? So there are two known ways to elevate muscle protein synthesis, and we’ll get a little bit more into what it is and all that good stuff, but it’s going to be a to train. And the second way is going to consume protein. I’m going to put “eat.” So make sure that you’re eating protein. So muscle protein, since this is a [00:01:00] naturally occurring process in which protein is produced to repair muscle damage. So one way I like to think of it is kind of the cyclical pattern here, which we have counteracting one another.
So it looks like this. Forgive this horrible drawing. But we have muscle protein breakdown, and then we have muscle protein synthesis. So the more you break your muscles down, the more muscle protein synthesis is going to be needed. A lot of times, when the mTOR, the signaling pathway, mTOR is activated, more, more muscle protein synthesis happens.
So how, what does this mean to you? Well, your goal, if you’re looking to gain. Or maintain would be muscle protein synthesis equals muscle protein breakdown. And if you want to [00:02:00] gain muscle, you want your muscle protein synthesis to be greater than your muscle protein breakdown. So a few ways to do that.
One is going to be protein quality. Right? So you want to make sure that you’re eating the right types of protein. So we have an egg, white protein, or just eggs. It is an excellent source because what you’re looking to get is leucine. So leucine plus carbohydrate, there’s some limited research on the carbohydrate portion, but leucine is essential.
At least two grams of leucine is what you’re looking to get post-workout to increase that muscle. Muscle protein synthesis. And you can do that through protein quality. So eating eggs, eating steak, pea protein, for vegans has a lot of leucine in it. Whey protein has a ton of leucine in it.
And you know, those are your options. You, you know, my recommendations typically are going to be way some sort of. If you can eat, then I would eat an egg or steak. Otherwise, supplementation way, pea protein, or egg [00:03:00] white protein cause all the other ones. You got to look at the leucine content, making sure you’re getting, hitting at least those two grams after a workout.
The other way to increase it would be — less rest between sets. So you want to less rest, less because there’s going to rest less. Because there’s going to be more pro muscle protein synthesis when you do that. So not taking as much time in between sets to fully recover unless you’re going for like one max, one at Max’s or something.
And then the third option there is going to be a frequency in lifting.
So, you know, it’s okay to lift every single day. Even if, you know, we primarily do concurrent training, which is the blend of conditioning and weightlifting. But if you can do your weight lifting first and then conditioning after, you’ll still have that muscle protein synthesis. You know, activation.
For you. So you always want to do a lift as much as you can. And then you can also hit body parts multiple times a day unless you’re a true bodybuilder looking for that full recovery. But it’s okay to hit the [00:04:00] same muscle groups multiple days in a row. And that is pretty much it. So you want to make sure that your training, that you’re eating enough, high-quality protein, getting less rest between sets and you know, lifting weights more frequently.
So this is muscle protein synthesis, really how to gain or maintain muscle mass. Do you have any questions? Please let me know.