Will nofap significantly help my gym workout?

The only possible direct correlation between NoFap and increased muscle mass would be the studies suggesting a small increase in testosterone with 1-3 weeks of abstinence. The problem is, these studies saw an increase in testosterone in the area of 30-40%. This is not enough to increase the rate at which you gain muscle. Increasing testosterone can do this with something like steroids, but that's because steroids increase your testosterone by a magnitude of something like 500% or more, not 30-40%.

So no, NoFap isn't going to make you gain muscle, not directly anyway.

However, indirectly is a whole other story.

Dopamine plays a crucial role in muscular strength. When dopamine levels decrease and serotonin levels increase, we get something known as central nervous system fatigue. CNS fatigue is a huge gains killer, as your strength will drop massively, and you simply won't be able to make progress. As you should hopefully know, both muscle and strength gains occur as a result of progressive overload, i.e. successive increments in total workload over time. If you don't make progress and simply continue lifting the same weight and the same reps and the same sets indefinitely, or progress backwards, then you will not gain muscle, or strength.

With more dopaminergic activity/higher dopamine levels on the other hand, exercise performance and total strength improves. This means you make progress, and progress means: Strength and muscle gains. If you have poor dopaminergic function, you will progress slower in terms of strength and endurance, and as a result, you'll also gain less muscle. If on the other hand, you have good dopaminergic function, you'll be able to progress faster.

What does any of this have to do with NoFap?

Masturbation can cause some serious problems for you with regards to dopamine. When you expose yourself to high levels of dopamine like those released when watching porn (or masturbating/edging for longer periods of time), you desensitise yourself to the effects of dopamine. D2 dopamine receptors down-regulate, meaning you have fewer active receptors, so even normal dopamine levels will produce a reduced response. (See more about porn and dopamine here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5039517/ )

In short, that means less dopamine.. and what did we learn about less dopamine? Less dopamine = poor exercise performance and decreased strength. Poor exercise performance and decreased strength means you'll progress slower. Slower progress means slower gains.

So is NoFap anabolic like steroids - causing you to grow additional muscle? Absolutely not, anyone who says otherwise has no idea what they're talking about. However does NoFap allow for faster progress in the gym and resulting quicker gains? Absolutely.

You're not going to be able to gain more than your natural limit, whether you do NoFap or not, but you will likely make faster progress if doing NoFap. As for how much faster? That really depends on the extent of your previous porn/PMO addiction.

 

porn screws your brain, hence you won't be able to establish a good mind-muscle connection with no mind.

 

The main thing is to quit porn for best results. If you can quit porn indefinitely, the biggest issue is gone - and as long as you aren't edging for hours on end (which can also cause that same dopamine excess porn causes), masturbation on its own is a million times less of a problem than porn is.

Most people find that recovery happens faster when abstaining from both though. So even if your intention is to masturbate - just infrequently, then you should still consider taking a "reboot" period of 2-3 months of no masturbation and no porn before you go back to infrequent masturbation. You'll be better equipped to work out how infrequently "infrequent" should be at that point too since you'll have mostly rewired your brain to no longer carry the habit, and so will be able to think rationally about it.

Right now the habit is still fully a part of you and so you will use every rationalisation possible to convince yourself to masturbate and watch porn more than you should. This is likely why right now you're asking about doing NoFap for short periods, rather than a long one.. because the habit itself is encouraging you to continue.

So try a longer reboot period first, and then re-evaluate, imo.

You'll also find during that reboot that you get to see how the effects of NoFap change over longer periods of time. This'll help you decide how long you need between masturbating if you do decide to do it every so often - because you'll see how long it takes for the most noticeable effects to kick in for you.

 

I think nofap can help your performance in the gym. I know that it does for me simply due to the fact that I actually stay there longer and focus on my workout, where as before, I would literally cut my workout short to go home and fap after seeing some of the ladies there. Yeah, it was pretty bad