Exercise science is not science
Neither is computer science, political science, economics, nutritional science or anything else with the word "science" in the name. I tire of internet weight lifting dorks talking about "science based lifting." None of these faggots know what they're talking about, and the "science" they base their assertions on isn't even pre-scientific. All of the "studies" they do are bullshit. There are no meaningful control groups. There is no way of making everyone do the exercise the same way. There is no way of controlling what they put in their gobs afterwords. There is no way of controlling the vast genetic differences in the groups of exercisers. The closest anyone came in all of human history to turning this sort of thing into science was the communist countries, as they did control some of these things. Soviet exercise science has some interesting ideas, it really just represents another shade on coaching. One which is absurdly confounded with the drugs they were pumping into people, and the fact that they were dropping the non-drug-responders off the training programs to go back to glorious people's nickel smelting plant.
These guys bug me because they all have their One True Way; do this number of sets and reps, pre stretch your whatever, do keto, don't do keto, weigh your food, eat broccoli, go in the Sauna, don't go in the cold plunge, take african beans that cannibals use to make their junk bigger, take X Y Z amino acids. They publish videos criticizing people more successful at sports than they are. Oh noe if only Sam Sulek had done a slower eccentric he would be n% huger. Or something. "Exercise science" is a cult, like veganism, keto-tardism, HIT-jedis, people who take follostatin gene therapy: it's all cult bullshit.
The reality is, any sort of sport or training activity will have esoteric coaching knowledge which totally works, and which is totally unstudied by exercise science, or, worse, studied in a way where you couldn't possibly learn anything real. Strongman, bodybuilding, arm wrestling, powerlifting, olympic lifting, strand pullers, grip training, gymnastics, wrestling, boxing, karate, judo, pretty much anything is going to have a lot of esoteria and the "science" journals won't be of much use. If you just go to the gym to keep fit, you might learn something from any of these disciplines. If you want to excel in any of them, you must learn from coaches. There are schools of coaching for each discipline which say opposite things from other schools which are equally effective, all other things being equal. Also, if you have bad genetics for any of these disciplines: no kind of coaching is going to make you a champion. I will never be a good basketball player because I'm short. I'll never be a high end armwrestler because I have shitty wrists. I can probably beat you in arm wrestling though, and it's not because I'm a scientist.
The ancient Greeks built tremendous physiques without barbells, sterons, protein powders, supplements, the scientific method or much of anything recognizable to "science based training." Old timey strong men wearing singlets and sporting unfashionable mustaches had feats of strength unmatched by contemporary strong men. No science involved there either. They did all kinds of things which ain't "science based" and it all seemed to work.
The things we actually know were basically known by Milo of Croton, probably by strong cavemen: progressive overload, high protein diets, consistency in training. That's pretty much it. Anything which has these three qualities will work. It will work better if you have a coach paying attention to what you're doing and watching the results. One of those three things, progressive overload, might actually be optional in certain conditions. People do "grease the groove" training where they do an exercise a few times spread out over the course of a day, doing a casual amount of weights; maybe 1-5 reps of your 10 rep maxes, or even less, several times a day, many days a week, and they still make improvements. Same story with gymnasts whose motions confer strength, but done mostly in a "grease the groove" way to make progress. In fact, I've found this a great way to make progress on high skill quasi-gymnast exercises like handstand push ups or chinups.
When you read the actual studies, anyone remotely acquainted with experimental design will see the problems with them. The human material isn't controlled for. The human material may be untrained, might be old, young, or unspecified. Anyone who has never trained basically hasn't gone through puberty yet. When the untrained finally train, pretty much anything will work. Comparing two kinds of training in untrained subjects is useless; whatever differences there are in progress are essentially going to be statistical noise, dominated by the genetics and condition and nutrition of the subjects, none of which can really be controlled for. Studies with trained athletes? How trained? Can you quantify this? I doubt it.
Bybon lifted this rock overhead with one hand in the 6th century BC
Learning to get healthy and strong by reading "the science" makes about as much sense as learning to have a good life and satisfying relationships by talking to psychologists. Nerds were useful when they were inventing things like electricity: the idea that nerds can tell you anything useful today beyond how to program your computard is delusional scientism. Talk to a coach; not a nerd. The nerd may been in pretty good shape, or not as the case may be, but it will always be because of consistency in the gym and kitchen (and possibly sterons) rather than any edge their knowledge of "the literature" has given them. The "science" part is shit, and always will be.
Exercise is an art, not a science. Renaissance artists were also strongmen: Leonardo could bend horseshoes with his hands through art, not science, which was pretty much unknown in his day. The same artist mentality that made the subtle smile of the Mona Lisa made Leonardo capable of incredible feats of strength and built him a strong and aesthetic physique. Get some exercise; make progress. Be an artist if you can, or read a book by one if you can't. Just don't send me any more "science based" training videos.