Acute Testosterone With Training by Jose Antonio, Ph.D., CSCS, FACSM, FNSCA, FISSN

You've heard the idea that certain types of workout regimens will induce marked increases in the anabolic hormones, such as testosterone, GH and IGF-1— and that by doing these exercises (i.e., following the particular rep-set-rest interval schemes), you'll have greater gains in muscle mass vis-à-vis the changes in anabolic hormones. Here's an intriguing study that looked into just that notion.

Twelve healthy, 22-year-old young men trained their elbow flexors (biceps, brachialis) independently for 15 weeks on separate days and under different hormonal milieu. In one training regimen, participants performed isolated arm curl exercises, designed to maintain basal hormone concentrations (low hormone, LH); in the other training condition, participants performed identical arm exercises to the LH condition, followed immediately by a high volume of leg resistance exercise, to elicit a large increase in endogenous hormones (high hormone, HH).

They found that there was no elevation in serum growth hormone (GH), insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), or testosterone after the LH protocol, but significant increases in these hormones immediately and 15 and 30 minutes after the HH protocol. The hormone responses elicited by each respective exercise protocol late in the training period were similar to the responses elicited early in the training period, indicating that a divergent post-exercise hormone response was maintained over the training period. But does this acute elevation with each training session translate into better gains in muscle fiber size? Well that's why they do the studies.

They found that muscle cross-sectional area (CSA) increased by 12 percent in LH and 10 percent in HH, with no difference between conditions. Similarly, both slow- and fast-twitch muscle fiber size increased with training, with no effect of hormone elevation in the HH condition. Strength increased in both arms, but the increase was not different between the LH and HH conditions. So what gives?1

I've always maintained that the acute elevations in hormones (as measured in blood) is not as important as local signaling happening at the level of the muscle fiber. Also, it is clear that a certain level of anabolic hormone (e.g., GH or testosterone) must be present in supraphysiological or perhaps pharmacological levels to induce real meaningful hypertrophy. And that, my friends, is why exogenous androgens work so well.