How to Build Muscle. The Beginner's Guide to Hypertrophy
First, let’s define hypertrophy and why you may want to strive for it:
HY·PER·TRO·PHY
• The enlargement of an organ or tissue from the increase in the size of its cells.
So, why would you want to build more muscle tissue?
Well, as you can imagine, there are a few reasons why it’s important:
Better health
Stronger tendons, bones, and ligaments
Easier fat loss (due to having more muscle)
Better aesthetic appearance
Lower Risk of Injury
Higher Metabolic Rate to burn more calories while eating more
Improved hormones
The point is we DO want hypertrophy and this applies to both men AND women. When we achieve more muscle tissues, we’re not only stronger physically, but we are healthier and look better. Muscle tissue is smaller than fat tissue when we compare it pound for pound. With muscle tissue being smaller, this means if you add a few pounds of muscle, you are not going to look like a bodybuilder (speaking for the women). Instead, adding a few pounds of muscle will actually make you look LEANER!
This happens because you’re stripping off body fat and slowly, gradually increasing your muscle tissue size. This results in actually having a smaller frame with added muscle mass in the right places - i.e. glutes, chest, arms, shoulders, legs, etc.
Here’s a photo to better explain what I mean here:
Knowing that fat is larger than muscle allows us to relax a bit and deemphasize the scale. This means if we are looking significantly better, and getting stronger week by week, then we are losing body fat and building muscle. This is the most optimal, ideal result we can work towards!! This is also why gaining a pound of fat is much more noticeable than gaining a pound of muscle.
In fact, if you did lose 5 pounds of body fat WHILE building 5 pounds of muscle, you’d look incredibly leaner while being more athletic and stronger while weight the exact same on the scale. That sounds like the ultimate win-win situation to me!!
Hypertrophy Training Vs. Strength Training for Muscle Growth
After nearly a decade of coaching everyone from 5 years olds discovering their athletic abilities to weekend warriors to professional athletes, I’ve learned that weightlifting can easily be divided into two broad categories:
Hypertrophy Training typically involves higher reps, lighter weights, shorter rest times, and often includes a ton of isolation exercises and more advanced training methodologies, such as drop sets, rest-pause sets, contrast sets, and so forth.
Strength Training typically involves lower reps, heavier weights, longer rest periods and focuses most of your efforts on fundamental, compound exercises like the squat, deadlift, bench press, and overhead press.
Many people believe that hypertrophy training is better for building bigger muscle (hence the name) when compared to strength training.
While hypertrophy and strength training both work together in developing muscle growth, strength training should be your priority.
Strength is the product of skill acquisition, neurological adaptation, and hypertrophy:
How strong we are is a function of multiple factors (muscle mass, neurological adaptations, and how familiar we are with the exercise. Strength is specific to a movement and rep range (i.e 1 rep maxes). So the more time you spend lifting a specific load with a specific exercise within a specific rep range, the stronger you’ll get on that specific exercise.
Volume is important for hypertrophy:
Hypertrophy is largely related to the total work performed and less dependent on the intensity (load). We can make our muscles grow using various exercises, rep ranges, and loads.
Hypertrophy Training 101:
The single best way to stimulate muscle hypertrophy growth is to get stronger. Strength training with lower reps and heavier weights is often better at stimulating muscle growth than “hypertrophy training” aka lighter weights and higher rep ranges.
This is because there are three primarily “triggers” for muscle growth:
Mechanical Tension
Mechanical Stress
Mechanical Damage
Mechanical tension refers to the amount of force produced within the muscle fibers. This is created by using a heavy load and performing exercises through a full range of motion. When you're lifting weights, you produce two types of mechanical tension within your muscles” “Passive” and “active” tension.
“Passive” tension occurs when your muscles are stretching during the eccentric (lowering) phase.
“Active” tension occurs when your muscles they’re contracting
Along with lifting heavy weights to create mechanical tension, it’s also well researched that lifting moderate to light weights for higher rep ranges will also promote muscle growth. This is known as mechanical stress, also known as the “pump” or the “burn” as you do higher rep ranges with shorter rest periods. This results in the muscles being placed into an anabolic state to increase the hormonal response for additional muscle growth.
Finally, we have mechanical or muscle damage. Muscle damage is sustained during resistance training and refers to the microscopic damage caused to the muscle fibers by high levels of tensions and stress. While we want to induce muscular damage, we also don’t want to induse too much, causing you to struggle going up the stairs.
Of these three muscle growth “triggers” mechanical tension is by far the most important because it provides the greatest muscle growth. The best way to create higher levels of tension is by training heavy compound exercises while adhering to progressive overload.
Progressive overload is simply doing more work than previously and it’s the oldest, most researched training principle. There are many different means to adhere to progressive overload, the simplest is getting stronger over time. As you get stronger, you’ll be able to lift more weights for more reps, making every other training goal significantly easier to accomplish.
Strength training generates large amounts of tension in your muscles and thus produces a more powerful stimulus for muscle growth than traditional hypertrophy-based training. Just to be clear, isolation exercises are not bad. They can be perfect for activating stubborn muscle groups and should be playing second fiddle to strength training
Hierarchy of Importance and Aesthetics
Over the course of the last decade, I’ve taken what I’ve learned from science, coaching, and my own experience. Over the years, I repeatedly found that these aspects are critical for building strength and muscle. When it comes to determining the hierarchy of importance for Hypertrophy gains, it can be summed up in a 3 part sequence of importance
Exercise Selection and Execution
Volume and Intensity
Frequency
1) Exercise Selection and Execution
Without question, this is our top priority when it comes to the importance of hypertrophy and strength.
Why? It’s simple.
If you cannot perform an exercise correctly, localizing the muscular tension in the correct region, then you’re not adequately stimulating muscle growth! You need to master your own biomechanics and understand how to properly execute your movement.
This is really important for us to cover this before going any further because if someone is trying to build muscle, we need to make sure they are properly engaging their muscles.
This is why it’s important to slow down and focus on finding the best exercise for you (exercise selection), so we can actually see really great results.
In addition to adequately feeling our muscles, the other fundamental piece to exercise selection is actually liking the training you're doing?!
Crazy I know?!
This matters most because if you are forcing yourself to workout because you absolutely hate what you’re doing in the gym, you’re doing this wrong and probably won’t achieve your goals.
Instead of forcing yourself to workout in a way you hate, find a way to enjoy the workouts you do. If you’re hating what you’re doing, then you’re not going to stick with it
By nailing these factors, we can be far more successful utilizing volume and intensity inside our training. We can accomplish more with less and then when we do increase volume and/or intensity, we’ll get more from the exercise, and recover better since we aren’t beating ourselves up.
2) Volume and Intensity
Volume and intensity are what actually form the foundation of your program. These variables are interrelated and inseparable from each other. Each affects the other and can do so in different contexts.
Volume: (Sets x Reps x Load = total volume")
This is the classical definition used for periodizing progressive overload, yet it’s more complicated than that. For hypertrophy and aesthetics, we have a different way of tracking volume and two specific points of volumes to be aware of:
Sets per Muscle per Week
When it comes to selecting how many sets you should be doing, it’s will largely vary due to the following:
Training Experience
The resilience of the nervous system
Lifestyle Stressors
Dietary Intake (Calories/macros)
Sleep and recovery
Due to these 5 factors, your personal volume amount will be different from the next person. As you can tell, volume needs for maximizing hypertrophy is an individualized process. This is why I often recommend most people start at the lower end of the volume bell curve and work towards the upper end.
So how much volume should you be doing? Here are a general statement and some specific pieces of advice on the total sets per microcycle that seem to be the most effective.
10-20 sets per muscle per week, for big muscle groups
i.e. Back, Chest, Legs, Glutes
5-15 sets per muscle per week, for smaller muscle groups
I.e. Arms, Delts, Abs, Calves
Sets per Muscle per Session
We covered how many sets per week you should be doing, let’s look into how many sets per session you should be doing. This is important to consider because there is a point of diminishing returns. This means you cannot do 20 sets of chest flys on chest day and expect amazing results. Too much volume can have a negative effect on both hypertrophy and strength. Doing too little volume and you won't see progress.
What I suggest is that the sets per session are between 6-10 depending on your strength levels, training experience, and recoverability.
3) Intensity
Intensity is important, often misunderstood variable. Many describe intensity based on “soreness” or how “hardcore” a workout was. However, intensity refers to either the “intensity of load” or the “intensity of effort”
Intensity is one of the most important factors in strength; it’s how you progressively get stronger by gradually increasing the intensity (Load).
This is a crucial aspect of hypertrophy for 3 reasons.
1) Neurological Adaptations
Strength and power work is very neurologically demanding. It’s why it’s important to take a deload week because it’s going to be the most neurologically fatiguing type of work you can do.
Neuromuscular adaptations to heavier loads allow your muscle to be more forceful and efficient. This means we can use more of your muscles full potential. Here’s how neuromuscular adaptations can make your muscles stronger.
Nervous system → Muscular system → Skeletal System
This explains that the nervous system controls our muscles, allowing them to fire and manipulate and/or move our skeletal system (joints). So without having some form of neurological efficiency, we’re leaving a lot of gains and progress on the table.
2) Stronger muscles become bigger muscles
Progressive overload is the key to having more muscles. As you get stronger, you’ll increase your muscle mass so you can lift heavier loads.
Over time if you get progressively stronger, you can also progressively increase volume by increasing the load amount being lifted
3) Personal Effort
A relatively popular way of measuring the intensity of effort is using the RPE (rating of Perceived Effort) or RIR (reps in reserve) methods.
Both methods are excellent tools to help you determine:
1) How hard you're working,
2) Volume and frequency capabilities
3) how close to failure you must go in order to truly see benefit from your training.
The reason is simple as it allows you to train at a level that is hard enough to provide a strong enough signal for growth.
Studies done in the training world, looking to maximize muscle growth, can be interpreted to show that the most successful rates of muscle growth come from near, but not at failure.
This means you must be working hard enough to recreate discomfort but it cannot be so hard that you're unable to recover from it. Typically, this means you’ll have 1-2 RIR or 8 RPE.
3) Training Frequency
Finally, we reach training frequency. Frequency is what organizes volume and intensity. It is about how you spend the training stress you need across the training week. Manipulating frequency is the way you organize your training to improve the relationship between stress and recovery so that no single session becomes too overly taxing your muscles.
Having a properly organized training frequency will minimize training fatigue to maximize recovery. In addition, with them being stimulated multiple times throughout the week rather than completely destroyed on one day, this will allow better muscle growth and progress to occur.
When it comes to designing a training program, there is no single training frequency. it‘s highly dependent on you finding the right approach for your training volume and schedule. For some, this means 3 times a week. For others, it means 4 or 5 times a week. Personally, I’ve found that doing a 3x week total body workout works best for 3 times a week and a push-pull split to be best for 4 days a week.
All have benefits, and all can work and all of them will suit each individual differently.
For all my clients, I program total body workouts because I’ve repeatedly found they are superior to building muscle rather than body part splits.
The 7 Best Ways to Stimulate Muscle Hypertrophy
While strength and hypertrophy is tremendously complex with scientist still investigating every aspect of muscle growth. However, if you do the following 7 things, you can gain a boatload of muscle and strength.
Prioritizing Foundational, Compound Movements
Instead of focusing on isolation exercises, focus on these six-movement patterns:
There are no “mandatory exercises” that are absolutely necessities (i.e. back squats or conventional deadlifts) within your strength training. However, there are six foundational movement patterns that everyone should be able to develop, load, and master:
Those six foundational movement patterns are:
Hip Hinge (i.e. deadlifts, KB Swings)
Squat (i.e. Goblet squats, Back Squats)
Push (Push-ups, bench press)
Pull (i.e. Chin-ups, Row variations)
Lunge (i.e. Split Squats, Reverse Lunges)
Carry (i.e. Farmer’s Carries)
With strength training, there is a specific variation for each movement category that everyone can do, regardless if you are injured, dealing with mobility issues, injuries, or lack of proper training experience.
2) Prioritize and Do a lot of Strength Training
There are many ways to train your muscles, but when you want to gain size and strength as quickly as possible, then strength training will be your golden ticket.
Without question, doing heavy, foundational, compound movements is better for building muscle while being better than kettlebell training, bodyweight, most group class, HIIT style training, yoga, and pilates.
By heavy foundational, movement training, I mean spending most of your time doing squats, deadlifts, chin-ups, bench press, etc within the range of 75-95% of your one-rep max, or 1-2 reps shy of failure.
3) Eat more calories than you burn
There’s a lot of truth in the old bodybuilding phrase, “ you gotta eat big to get big.” With that being said, I’m not telling you that you need to go onto the “See-Food diet”, aka eating everything in sight.
Fortunately, a slight calorie surplus of just 5-10% is enough to maximize muscle growth without putting on too much unwanted fat gain. You’ll know you’ve got it right when you’re gaining 1-3 pounds per month if you are a man or half a pound if you’re a woman.
4) Eat a lot of protein and carbs
Aside from water, the main component of muscle tissue is protein. This is why protein is so important as you need to provide your body enough building material (aka protein) for your body to make your muscles bigger and stronger.
So, how much protein does this process require to build muscle? The golden standard is one gram per pound of bodyweight. For example, a 150lb person would need 150 grams of protein per day to optimally build muscle
After protein, your next dietary priority when building muscle is your carbs. Carbs are your body’s preferred source of energy during intense exercise. When you exercise, your cells require significantly more energy than usual and carbs will quickly provide the necessary energy. You’ll have a much easier time gaining muscle and strength on a high carb diet than on a moderate or low carb diet.
5) Do some Isolation and pump work
Mechanical Stress aka the pump is a necessary component to building muscle. The sweet spot for building muscle is a moderately heavy weight for 3-8 reps. This combination works wonders for both mechanical tension and stress.
As for isolation work, you’ll want to do 12-30 reps working towards a 1 RIR to get that muscular pump. The goal is moderate muscular damage, not a full out obliteration of your arms that leaves you unable to pour coffee.
6) Do some Cardio
Surprised? Now, let me get this out of the way first: no cardio will not cut down on your gains unless you are doing too much. In fact, it can improve your muscle and strength gain. Here’s what I recommend:
Limit your cardio sessions to 1LISS (Low-intensity Steady State) cardio and/or 1 HIIT (high-Intensity interval Training) Cardio session per week.
Your LISS cardio sessions should last between 20-40 minutes MAX. Choose low impact types of cardio such as cycling, rowing, elliptical, and/or swimming over high impact options like running or plyometrics. This will help minimize muscle damage and soreness.
Limit your HIIT Cardio sessions to 5-15 minutes MAX! HIIT burns more calories per minute than LISS cardio, yet causes more fatigue, muscle damage, and wear and tear on the body.
If you are unsure how much cardio you want to do, start with two hours of low-intensity cardio per week. This is roughly going for 20 minutes, walking 10,000 steps per day. This will provide many of the benefits or regular cardio without interfering with muscle growth.
7) Take the Right Supplements
Truth be told, I was hesitant on adding this because it’s far less important than nutrition and training. However, I also know someone will be asking.
Let’s be clear - supplements don’t build a great physique; your dedication to proper training and nutrition does. You really don’t need to take supplements unless you need to fill the missing gap within your nutrition.
For the complete list, you can click here to read the top 4 supplements to maximize your progress.
The Next Step
As for your next step, I highly recommend you check out How to Make 2021 your Best Year: Periodizing an entire year of nutrition and training. This is an all-inclusive guide to creating a synergistic training and nutritional strategy to propel you towards achieving your best physique ever by the end of 2021.
Finally, I want you to know…..
All the knowledge you absorbed within this article doesn’t equal change.
If you’re fed up with how COVID fucked up your year, invest in a coach.
If you’ve read LITERALLY DOZENS of guides like this in the past and still haven’t made the change nor the confidence you want, invert in a coach.
If you’re overwhelmed by the content in this article, invest in a coach.
If you cannot be consistent with the strategies within this article, invest in a coach.
If you are ready for a change, I’m here to coach you.