It's all about leverage. Now, I want to emphasize that, this isn't the primary stimulus for hypertrophy. If it were so, then competitive bikers would have the biggest quads. Rather, this is all about metabolic efficiency, the ability of your body to use the caloric bounty as efficiently as possible once you've told the muscle to get bigger. Practically speaking, this is what everybody had originally hoped creatine would do for muscle growth.
From a bulker's point of view, it significantly improves the muscle-to-fat gain ratio from a caloric surplus diet. Let me add that until the early 90s, before splits and PL-ish programs became en-vogue, most programs had enough volume that the above wasn't an issue. The modern version of the bulking + cutting ritual that we see today is, more or less, a by-product of modern programs not doing a very good job stimulating mitochondrial density throughout the body.
The above is one of the mechanisms that enables DC trainees to eat sick amounts of protein and food in general and yet bulk quickly and relatively cleanly. It's also why 20-rep squats, plus that gallon of milk, works so well in developing the lower body.
The dieting side is a little messy, though. Here's why -->
1) Having higher mitochondrial density means your BMR is higher. But, the key advantage is that it also improves the leverage between bodyfat usage and glycogen/amino acid depletion. Leptin levels are influenced by mitochondrial density as well as bodyfat percentage. Therefore, if your BF% is relatively high, having higher mitochondrial density means your body has an easier time dipping into your BF for energy rather than using immediate glycogen or amino acids to metabolize.
2) However, after serious exercise, it also means your body is more aggressive at scavenging for energy, by virtue of more mitochondria being "switched on." Therefore, if one does not adequately replenish stores and eat protein during the 2-4 hour window, then the catabolic response will probably be much stronger. As a result, it's really not such a bad idea to treat the 2-4 window post-WO window as a "mini-bulk", and then balance the caloric deficit out through the rest of the day.
3) Here's the most interesting thing. The easiest way to stay naturally lean and to get reasonably shredded without having to go keto, is to frequently and fairly aggressively increase mitochondrial proliferation. Not only is this the underlying mechanism for Poliquin's GVT program and Charles Staley's EDT, but it's also how HIIT cardio (not the EPOC post-metabolic thing) actually works to burn fat.
If you don't believe me, look at high school and college athletes who go into wrestling or water polo. During their regular season, due to the anaerobic full-body element of their sports, they increase their anaerobic threshhold throughout not just their legs, but backs, core and upper torso. Now, the high caloric expenditure in their sports and practice session necessarily makes it difficult to put on mass. But, at the same time, even the lean ones show a fairly impressive level of tone that does not apply to their cross country mates.
Then, when they go into offseason and concentrate on bulking, most of them are able to put on size suprisingly quickly without putting on a lot of fat. That is, they spend half of the year training most of their musculature to become a massive food factory. Then, when they start working on bulking and building strength, their bodies are extremely efficient at storing glycogen, converting amino acids to protein, and so on. =======================================================
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