So, you want to grow muscle, get bigger, stronger, or get jacked, whatever you want to call it! Here, at Vector Health & Performance in Rockhampton and Yeppoon, we wanted to break down a few myths!
In terms of sharing some context: Here are two athletes that I coach. There is a significant age difference between the two athletes. The bench PB at a similar bodyweight and the change over a training program is significantly different. One has achieved a 30kg increase across about 8 weeks and the other athlete achieved a 2.5kg PB over an 8 week period. There are so many factors that moderate whether someone is going to improve in strength and hypertrophy. Training age is for me a significant value. The higher the training age in general, the less likely you will get ground breaking improvements in strength and hypertrophy. Its so important that we take the research and examine what types of people were participants. So many research studies are conducted on sedentary or untrained people. This means that the results are generally going to be significant. It is a different ballpark with someone with a higher level of training or experience.
You can read so many things on the internet, listen to so many people and if you are not quite sure of how, its like you will hear a different opinion from everyone, which can be quite confusing!
I spend a significant part of my life educating people I coach, to make sure that what I am saying I am trying to utilise the most recent information that comes from research, but also then trying to flavour that with personal experiences from coaching for tens of thousands of hours.
The one thing I have learned, is that hypertrophy, or muscle growth rarely happens exactly the same for 2 people.
Firstly, what is true hypertrophy?
I would argue that true hypertrophy is the increase of cross-sectional area of muscle mass that can be specifically measured. How do you know without measuring? You can utilise methods such as skin folds, various body fat or body composition scales, body measurements such as girth measurements to guide progress though. The high-tech measuring sources are in general, out of most people’s league, such as Ultrasound Echo measuring devices.
What do you have to do to engage muscle growth or hypertrophy?
Consistency: In a recently review article by Damas et al (2018), these were some key points that were stipulated according to the review of a significant number of research studies:
Week 1-3 – generally most cross sectional area of any growth would be more related to muscle damage, where swelling causes an increase in volume of muscle. This is not true hypertrophy.
After 8-12 resistance training sessions, some can see hypertrophy of 3-4% of cross sectional area.
After at least 18 sessions over 6-10 weeks, we can start to see “true hypertrophy” and what is said to be functionally meaningful at 7-10%.
What sort of load/volume/rest/intensity do I need to do to grow muscle or create hypertrophy
- High load training will increase maximal strength and hypertrophy in general better than low load training. Low load training is classed at 60% or below 1RM training. In a review, Schoenfeld et al 2017 stated there was no significant difference between heavy and light load training when promoting or increasing muscle growth provided training is carried out with a high level of effort.
- However, high load training is seen to increase Type II muscle fibre cross sectional area and low load training is seen to increase Type I cross sectional area. Type II in short are primarily responsible for maximal effort at short durations and Type I muscle is responsible for activities that are more aerobic and longer term, endurance type exercise. You need to consider your options depending on what you are training for.
Volume: This is the most difficult part to choose for each individual. This highly depends on your training age, your ability to tolerate different types of exercise, injury and medical history, nutrition, stress, sleep and your body type. This is where to get the absolute best out of yourself, having someone to talk through programming is really important. Howqever, some general guidelines that I work with are:
- Focus on exercises that activate more muscle. Example, squats over leg extensions as they are compound rather than single joint activity.
- 6-8 exercises per session. 2 to 4 sessions per week. 2 to 5 sets of work per exercise. Rep ranges here vary depending on the ultimate goal. However we might start with a mix of say 2 to 6 for some and 6 to 12 for others to try to stimulate the whole motor unit (or muscle fibre type composition matrix) complex.
REST and TEMPO
In general, if you have more time, then I would lean towards higher effort, longer rest to allow more appropriate recovery timeframe and therefore more maintenance of effort and output.
Short rest would qualify from 30 to 90 seconds. This means you need to be careful at prescribing the load. You cannot do high intensity or high load training with rest timeframes at 30-90 seconds. You might think you are doing high load, but you will be undercutting yourself as you will not be able to back up the work you need to do to achieve the strength and volume you wish to achieve.
Long rest would be from 2-5 mins between sets. An example of this would be 8 sets of squats at 10 reps for 70% of your 1RM. You might be able to do this on 3.5 mins rest between sets; 10 squats is about 30-50 seconds of work. This would be a significant challenge in itself. However this would qualify onto the boundary of high load training.
Tempo of work can vary. There is no absolute clear response on what is BEST for hypertrophy. The research is mixed in responses and results.
In general, what I see people doing that they could change is:
- Pick exercises that are high value as such first. Do isolated work at end of your program.
- Work harder on a week to week basis at putting more “effort” into what you are doing. You need to get comfortable getting the end part of your range of strength as your technical aptitude grows. The research indicates that effort is very important at getting results.
- Pain does not necessarily designate growth or strength. However, it is expected that during a session, the pain of fatigue as you come close to failure can happen as part of a fatigue process in the body.
- Volume and effort are probably two of the most important variables of hypertrophy.
- Technique matters – it helps prevent overuse injury and moment of time injury in lifting. Learn this first, take your time to get it right so then we can ask you for effort and you can give us the effort but not with injury or inappropriate pain.
To find out more about how we can help you grow, get jacked or increase muscle mass and hypertrophy in your off-season, or just for life and fun, please contact me on my email at glenn@vectorhealth.com.au or call 4927 8190 to make an appointment to see Director of Coaching, Glenn Hansen for an initial appointment.