How To: Hypertrophy for Dummies

Ah, the science sounding ”H” word, eh? Well, hypertrophy is just the concept of building muscle, so I’m assuming you’re interested in some of that! 

For those that want to know a little more about how to build muscle, I can give you a breakdown. Once you know the principles of muscle building then you can “cook” up your own recipes of delicious muscle building fun. 

Here’s the short story.

Keep in mind that in training (and life) “there are no solutions; only trade offs.” This means as you adjust these variables below that you manipulate, you get something but you’ll also give up something. For example, if you increase range of motion, you’ll (by definition) decrease load in most cases. 

All that said, you need three essential things to be present to build muscle. Here they are:

1. Mechanical Tension (Load, ROM, TUT): You’re going to need tension on the muscle you want to grow. That means generally bigger loads over large ranges of motion with considerable time under tension is better than their alternatives. This explains why body builders love going relatively heavy with controlled, slow movements and even include extra ranges of motion. 

1. Muscle Damage (Concentric < Eccentric Contractions): There are three types of contraction: isometric, eccentric, and concentric. The eccentric portion (or lowering of the weight) has the greatest loading potential and does the most muscle damage (in a good way). That means great movements for hypertrophy usually include a concentric and eccentric phase and most body builders emphasize the eccentric. 
2. Metabolic Stress (Rep schemes, Rest Periods): Doing a great job on both of the criteria above for 81 sets of 1 reps seems silly (and it is). So, is doing just one set of six. You could also do really intelligent reps and sets and rest two hours between efforts and miss the boat, so increasing metabolic stress is also about minimizing rest. Metabolic stress is asking us to provide enough stress to change the body. Typically rep ranges for hypertrophy are between 4-12 reps for 3-5 sets. But, the literature is starting to show that the most important factor here is that the reps train near failure no matter how you get there. 

Now, that’s it! It’s not very complicated. It’s still not easy, but it’s pretty straight forward. If you want to build lean tissue, you now have the three ingredients. 

It’s time to cook!