Masturbation is a hard topic you guys are interested in, so let’s ask the trickling question that you all came here to ask.
Does masturbation affect muscle growth?
You probably have heard of how testosterone can be affected with ejaculation.
For those of you not familiar with testosterone; testosterone is knwon as an androgenic hormone that plays a crucial role in the development of the male characteristics in the body.
The one characteristic that you need to know in this article is testosterone’s role in building muscle.
With high levels of testosterone, your body is better able to build muscle through muscle protein synthesis after a stimulating workout.
Both men and women have testosterone, but men have approximately 15 times more.
The belief around the internet is that masturbation and orgasm will cause your testosterone levels to deflate. So that obviously means your gains will be softening, too.
Well, let’s see if the studies back up this hardened claim.
Let’s first dig through the research about the effects of short term abstinence.
One study showed that subjects “holding it in” for 7 days did in fact saw a significant increase in blood testosterone, but then trickled back down to normal levels and sometimes lower than normal in the following days after.
Another study showed that waiting 3 weeks before taming your monster did cause a very small increase in testosterone compared to not waiting at all. It seems that abstinence can in fact increase testosterone.
But what happens to your body when you finally do masturbate and orgasm?
The very clear change after masturbation is the 20-minute boost in the hormone prolactin.
This seems to serve the purpose of suppressing sexual desires following orgasm.
When prolactin increases, the hormone causing sexual arousal, dopamine, decreases.
Also, heart rate stays elevated a few hours after orgasm, and elevated even higher if the subjects worked out after orgasm versus working out without orgasm.
Even so, studies show that orgasm had no detrimental nor improving effects in moderate to maximum exercise performance.
And finally, the effects of orgasm on testosterone levels are non-existent.
So it seems safe to say that masturbation and orgasm isn’t going to affect your gains all that much. And even though abstinence did see some increase in testosterone, the difference is not enough to justify holding back any sexual activity.
In fact, the changes aren’t nearly as much as other factors you should consider. One of which is the time of day. When you wake up, your testosterone levels are at its highest. Towards the evening, it drops by as much as 75%.
Studies even found a decrease in testosterone levels if you lose in a competitive event. Lacking certain nutrients, like Zinc, also causes a much more dramatic decline in serum testosterone. And of course, a huge factor is your actual exercise.
Almost all exercises increase testosterone levels for a short amount of time, with resistance training have the greatest increase.
As we can see, there’s so many other things in play that worrying about timing your fap seem rather pointless. And these small, short-term changes are not nearly as important as maintaining high testosterone levels in the long run.
But with all this being said, you should still limit yourself. If you’re the type that tugs away so often that you don’t have time for the gym or if you’re the type that after you masturbate, you no longer have motivation or feel that you’re “up” for going to the gym, then yes, masturbation can damage your gains.
Like anything else in life, moderation is the key. Now, for all you happy tuggers, hopefully you now feel “relieved” with this news. Just know that your gains are going to be okay if you tug away.
As always, thanks for reading this article!
