How long should hypertrophy phase be

Rinse and repeat. This is mainly due to their function and role in program design. Linear PO is the easiest to implement and is simply the increase of one variable while another decreases, both at a constant rate. When graphed over time, the primary variable is an upward sloping straight line traveling towards infinity.

Undulating PO is the steady rise and fall of two variables that have an inverse relationship. When this overload style is graphed, you get two horizontal waves with opposite peaks that intersect at regular intervals. Similar to linear progression, these two lines perpetually dance along the X-axis as they travel towards infinity.

Undulating, just like linear, can apply to any two variables but is most commonly used with load and volume. Looking at the graphs above and their descriptions, you might notice some potential limitations within each style. In these forms, both options suck. If only we had a way to define the beginning and endpoints for these PO techniques so that they could be repeatable but not continue on for eternity….

Adding time parameters to these progressive overloading methods allows us to increase a particular stressor for a certain duration, reset it, recover from it, then reapply it later at a greater intensity. Segment deadlines combined with progressive overloads give us the cyclic pattern of improvement discussed earlier. Periodization was originally developed for sports that compete around an annual competition cycle. Meaning, you could have a complete periodized program that lasts just 3 months or one that extends to a 4 year Olympic schedule.

It all depends on your goals and training experience. However, the longer a mesocycle lasts, the more time you have to improve a skill. So, longer is usually better. The main concept to take away from this section so far is that our goal oriented workouts need to follow a long term plan that incorporates variety through the application of progressive overloading techniques and rest.

Be critical of your progress and frequently reevaluate your needs so that you can build a simple plan that changes often enough to force growth when you plateau, but lasts long enough to allow for adaptation. Keep in mind that these are overly simplified, one dimensional routines that highlight only two approaches to training.

In this first example, we have a 5 month long macrocycle that consists of 4 mesocycles. Each mesocycle lasts for 5 weeks with a rest week could be swapped for a deload , and alternates between strength and hypertrophy for bench press. While there are 4 mesocycles in total, there are only two sections of unique programming.

Month 3 is a copy of month 1 and 4 is a duplicate of 2. The workouts in months 1 and 3 might be the same, but the loads used should go up each cycle — month 3 lifts should be heavier than 1. Because the load variable is constantly increasing, each cycle makes us better at a particular skill and allows us to apply a greater level of intensity the next time we run through it. When we look at the microcycles of each month, we can see the two PO techniques in action.

The hypertrophy segments follow a basic linear PO pattern with the weight increasing weekly and the volume dropping in response. In contrast, the strength portions steadily change the load and reps each day. Daily changes in a variable are known as daily undulation. This alternating pattern of segments places an equal emphasis on both traditional strength and hypertrophy training methods. Straightforward and uncomplicated. However, this schedule places a greater emphasis on hypertrophy by drawing out the load peak time in the hypertrophy phase to 2 months.

Instead of cycling back and forth evenly, we spend one mesocycle on strength and then two in row trying to grow with hypertrophy. As shown in the weekly breakdown, the load for strength still follows a daily undulating PO that peaks twice a month, but the specific day to day changes are different. Both options take us to the same place, they just follow different routes.

More room for you to experiment. The changes in the hypertrophy mesocycles are really simple — a longer skill improvement duration for more volume and more growth.

This strength to hypertrophy ratio is a great example of how we can allocate our time to target multiple goals throughout a periodization cycle but still place an emphasis on the attribute we care about most.

To see more examples of periodization and full programs, check out the Programs page — a lot of fun stuff there. And the even bigger, more disappointing answer — it completely depends on the individual. To dial in the absolute, most effective exercise strategy for any one person, a program has to be incredibly specific.

And the more specific a program is, the fewer people it can help. Meaning, there is no one size fits all outline that can perfectly maximize results. However, I can make general recommendations that work really well for most people. Regarding cycle length, I like to build programs around 1 week microcycles and week mesos, with the macro duration being dependent on the number of goals a client is interested in working towards.

For most people in the beginner to intermediate stages of lifting, month programs tend to be best. While you have the option to deload in your rest week between mesocycles and continue lifting, I prefer that you spend this recovery week outside of the gym. Focus on other aspects of fitness hiking, yoga, pilates, climbing, competitive dog walking, etc and just take a break from weight training.

Kill it for 4 weeks straight, then embrace your well deserved time off. Linear vs undulating? I suggest that you use a mixture of linear and undulating PO. But in order to effectively and safely traverse through a month long meso, our weekly microcycles need to be constructed so that they maximize growth, minimize the risk of injury, and allow for proper recovery.

As previously discussed, heavy weights load each of our muscle fibers with high levels of force. This mechanical loading is then translated into various chemical signals that instruct our bodies to change physically in preparation for future demands. One of these adaptations is the growth of new muscle tissue through a process called muscle protein synthesis MPS — specifically the production of myofibrillar proteins that form new sarcomeres.

These new contractile proteins created through MPS are deposited into our muscle fibers and slowly increase sarcomere count and total muscle size over time. The mechanical forces we experience during a strenuous weight training session make our muscles more sensitive to presence of amino acids AA in our blood. This increased sensitivity to changes in AA concentrations, specifically leucine, results in much higher protein synthesis activity than normal.

For beginners, this state of significantly elevated MPS can last over 2 days while highly trained lifters typically see MPS levels return to pre-exercise baselines after roughly 24 hours.

Meaning, most of us are passively building new muscle tissue days after an effective workout as long as our diet is dialed in correctly. On the opposite side of the spectrum, muscle protein breakdown MPB is the deconstruction of existing muscle tissue into amino acids for use in various metabolic process throughout the body. Although beginners see massive spikes in the formation of new proteins after heavy lifting, they also have to deal with greater levels of muscle loss.

Luckily, this breakdown of lean mass is less concerning than it may sound. Eat smart and keep the lean tissue you have. The post workout anabolic equation shown above combined with MPS activity gives us enough basic information to start forming a rough weekly training outline. The overall plan is pretty simple, we want to stimulate MPS with resistance training as synthesis rates start to drop back down close to resting levels but not too soon before. This allows us to take full advantage of the entire synthesis duration and promote a constant state of growth.

Because MPS activity for beginners lasts nearly twice as long as trained lifters, we can conclude that the more fit someone is, the more often they need to exercise to increase hypertrophy and improve strength.

Taking MPS data alone also implies that there are no impedances to our growth potential. No thanks. To realistically quantify these frequencies, we need to factor in recovery times by looking at muscular damage and fatigue. Within the context of fitness, muscle damage can be defined as an exercise induced muscular injury that results in pain, swelling, and a loss of function. Symptoms can range from minor to severe but are usually always present following an intense session.

Damage is typically caused by unfamiliar physical activity and can be exacerbated by high load eccentric contractions and large repetition volumes why low volume strength training is emphasized for beginners.

When exercise is put on hold and the body is allowed to recover, most damage is fully repaired after days. While muscle damage is far from a one dimensional process, the ultimate cause of our problems seems to be the structural compromise of sarcomeres.

These essential building blocks of muscle can warp in shape, form tears in their segment links, or even completely rupture depending on the grade of injury. Damaged sarcomeres produce weaker contractions, experience less force due to lower load tolerances, and can ultimately hinder growth if not given enough time to recover. Research investigating the link between MPS and muscle damage suggests that the products of muscle protein synthesis will prioritize fixing a broken foundation over adding new structures if damage is present.

However, muscle damage is not some purely evil opponent to gains, plotting to undermine our weight training progress at every rep. In fact, the potentially destructive force of intense exercise can be controlled and directed to make us better, as seen in the basic periodization principle of progressive overloading. One of the most immediately noticeable benefits of muscle damage is its ability to shorten our recovery time due to the repeated bout effect RBE. The repeated bout effect is a concept that basically says we adapt to stressors the more often we do them.

As mentioned earlier, unfamiliar exercises can be the most damaging and may require a week of repair between sessions. By introducing appropriate amounts damage at regular intervals, RBE results in neural and muscular adaptations that drastically help beginners ramp up their training frequency and provide consistent gains for more experienced lifters.

The success of progressive overloading is primarily due to the repeated bout effect and the way it forces our bodies to grow when exposed to the demands of intense physical exercise. When implemented at manageable levels, muscular damage can also be a catalyst for the addition of new sarcomeres as well as two structures we have yet to cover — costameres and satellite cells. Costameres contribute to contraction forces and the overall structural integrity of a fiber by serving as anchor points that connect myofibrils to the cell membrane and assist in lateral force transmission across the muscle — increasing costameres can improve strength.

Both of these elements are increased in number following a damaging workout and can significantly impact our training in very positive way. But if we want to harness the power of damage and use it for good, we need to be able to identify its presence and severity. But just about all of us have experienced a delayed onset of muscle soreness DOMS following a brutal workout. This post exercise pain is our marker for damage.

Just use a basic 10 point scale, with 1 representing the absence of pain. This method gives us a simple and intuitive way to assess our recovery status.

Starting with beginners, we know that MPS can last over two days and muscular damage can take up to seven to heal if we do nothing to expedite it.

To capitalize on the benefits of the repeated bout effect, we know that we need to exercise a muscle more than once. From there, the soreness scale helps us determine how many days of rest should separate these two sessions as well as their estimated levels of intensity. For example, if a beginner were to perform a full body workout on Monday, they could use the DOMS scale on Wednesday to determine whether their next session should occur Thursday or Friday.

As mentioned in the Beginner Training section, programming for untrained lifters is more about becoming familiar with movements neural adaptations and developing strength than it is about hypertrophy. Embrace the power of the heavy metal healer. Things are a bit more simple on the experienced lifter side, but the basic concepts still apply. MPS activity dies down after roughly 24 hours for highly trained individuals, but most non-beginners still need at least 48 hours of rest to recover properly from intense sessions.

So, 2 days of rest are still needed. Meaning, experienced lifters could safely target a single muscle up to 4 times a week. Working the same muscle group every other day is definitely on the high end, but it can be a safe and effective method if our final frequency factor is kept in check.

The last piece of the microcycle frequency puzzle is nervous system fatigue and it can be separated into two forms — central and peripheral. Peripheral nervous system PNS fatigue is a localized decrease in contractile force primarily due to the depletion of energy sources ATP and glycogen and build up of metabolites lactate, ammonia, and hydrogen ions within a muscle following an intense exercise bout.

Basically, the muscular failure that we all experience towards the end of a difficult working set. Peripheral fatigue is sudden in onset and debilitating, but also incredibly brief, with recovery requiring only a few minutes of downtime. The accumulation of PNS fatigue is primarily what causes our higher threshold motor units to be recruited towards the end of a difficult working set.

Central nervous system CNS fatigue on the other hand, is a major programming component that can really screw up our gains if not accounted for correctly. Central nervous system fatigue is the exhaustion of our brain and spinal cord due to repeated overstimulation, resulting in altered levels of neurotransmitters and impaired neuromuscular signalling efficiency.

Inactive and underworked type 2 fibers result in less mechanical loading, decreased motor unit recruitment, and fewer gains. Fortunately, this problem is avoidable with proper recovery. The total neural toll that a single workout takes on a person depends on their individual training experience and conditioning level. Like MPS activity and muscle damage, there seems to be a correlation between training status and the degree of neural exhaustion.

To be safe, if the upper end of the CNS recovery range is hours, it may be best for untrained lifters to rest that long between really draining sessions to ensure they stay mentally energized.

This basic understanding of nervous system fatigue combined with what we know about MPS activity and muscle damage gives us just about all the pieces needed to build a really solid microcycle. But to tie it all together and support our conclusions, we need to look at some research trends observed in studies that specifically investigate weekly training frequency.

The majority of the data point to the same common conclusions:. When this research information is factored in with MPS activity, muscle damage repair, and CNS fatigue, these microcycle frequency variables harmonize together to create a clear and unified message. To increase both hypertrophy and strength, I recommend that —. Beginners should perform full body workouts times per week with at least 48 hours of rest between sessions, for a total of workouts per week.

This routine promotes MPS activity for up to six days, takes advantage of the repeated bout effect to help repair muscle damage, and provides enough rest time to help CNS fatigue dissipate. In contrast, trained lifters should aim to target each muscle group times per week with at least 48 hours of rest between same muscle stimulation, for a total of workouts per week.

Easy and very doable for most people. The hardest part will be assessing your own level of fitness on the untrained-trained spectrum — dialing in an optimal frequency will most likely take a little trial and error. If you need help, let me know. Exercise order within a single workout is a relatively simple problem to solve compared to other aspects of program design.

For the most part, this sequence is controlled by just two factors — fatigue and training goals. Fundamentally complete programs aimed at improving both strength and hypertrophy should incorporate some mixture of strength, hypertrophy, aerobic cardio, anaerobic cardio, and power. These two modalities are often overlooked when pursuing gains, but they can have a major impact on our progress if implemented correctly.

Cardiovascular conditioning is associated with an impressively long list of general health benefits, making it an essential part of any fitness program. Within the context of resistance training, aerobic and anaerobic cardio give us one major advantage over those that skip it — greater work capacity. Work capacity is basically the amount of exercise volume we can complete in a set amount of time per set or per day and how quickly we can recover from it. Cardiovascular exercise stimulates protein synthesis similar to lifting weights, but primarily results in mitochondrial proteins instead of myofibrillar proteins.

More muscular energy and faster activity turnaround times due to an improved work capacity result in greater total workload density. For example, if you have a really busy schedule and only one hour to lift per day, you definitely want that hour to be as productive as possible. A low work capacity may require you to wait minutes between sets to perform your best and may still leave you pretty fatigued at the end of the session.

That fatigue could then possibly carry over to the next day and impact that workout as well. In contrast, a high work capacity could drop your inter-set rest times to 2 minutes, allow you to knock out an extra rep or two per set, and keep you from feeling dead as you walk out the door. For a more detailed breakdown of cardio programming and my recommended routine, check out the Fat Loss Programming guide.

The emphasis of that article is weight loss, but the methods used directly improve general cardiovascular efficiency as well. It should have just about all the tools and information you need to build a great cardio program and boost work capacity. As we briefly covered before, power based training has an important role in neuromuscular activity.

Within Fitstra training programs, high velocity movements are added to decrease motor unit recruitment thresholds and increase rate coding. We can attempt to decrease MU recruitment thresholds by taking advantage of an acute phenomenon called post activation potentiation PAP.

PAP is a theory that basically states our muscles remember how much fiber activation was recently required and will be more prone to recruit at least the same amount of motor units during subsequent activities. Post activation potentiation can result in increased fiber recruitment towards the beginning of a set, greater strength output, and more volume completed under heavy loads. When performed before a heavy barbell squat, the jumps prime our neuromuscular pathways, create a short term contractile history, and make the motor neurons involved more easily excitable due to their recent activation.

Performing one exercise that mimics the MU recruitment requirements of another essentially lowers MU thresholds by decreasing the stimulation needed to create action potentials.

Post activation potentiation is what makes moderate weight feel extra light when performed after a much heavier set. More research needs to be done on PAP to fully understand it, but enough studies point to its effectiveness to ignore it completely. On the other side of this powerful discussion, we have rate coding.

Rate coding is a measurement of how frequently motor neurons generate action potentials per second and is just as important to force production as MU recruitment. When contracting at slower speeds or against lower opposing forces, rate coding is typically low.

In contrast, rate coding is noticeably higher when moving fast or lifting heavy weights. Through the application of high velocity exercises as a supplement to strength training, we can increase our baseline rate coding frequency, improving our strength and growth potential. There are endless ways to add supplemental power training into your program, but I like it in warm ups mainly for PAP and mixed into HIIT circuits, in minimal to moderate volumes.

Fatigue is half of the ordering equation, but it has the most influence over daily structure. Because effective resistance training programs require some form of cardio, we need to make sure that our sessions support concurrent targeting more than one exercise style — resistance and cardio in most cases training while avoiding unnecessary amounts of fatigue.

To keep both CNS and PNS fatigue from interfering with our workout productivity, we start with strength, transition into hypertrophy, and then end with cardiovascular conditioning. Untrained lifters will be able to get away with any random order they want for months, but that will fade along with the beginner gains — do things the right way from the start.

While not pictured, power training would occur before strength for competitive athletes football, CrossFit, weightlifting, etc. But if movements like the snatch, clean, and jerk are important to you, do them first. They require a lot of neuromuscular coordination and explosive energy but also produce very little fatigue if volume is kept in check. The second line in ordering structure addresses the arrangement of multi-joint vs single-joint exercises and is also primarily influenced by fatigue.

While multi-joint movements can feel more tiring than their single-joint counterparts, isolating individual muscles with single-joint exercises actually leads to greater levels of localized peripheral fatigue. If performed first, single-joint movements can compromise the overall integrity of multi-joint movements.

If one muscle in a kinetic chain is weakened, the loading potential for that exercise will be decreased. While this multi to single-joint transition is best in most scenarios, there are instances where that order could be reversed pre-exhaustion. The last exercise ordering guideline relies on personal preferences and individual program goals. This is especially true for untrained lifters.

The hamstring curls and cardio would be performed last, but the order of squats and deadlifts would be your decision to make. If squats are a weak point, it would be best to do them first. If you hate deadlifts and want to get them out of the way as soon as possible, go for it. As long as the first two points in the exercise order checklist are marked off concurrent style and joint order , the final tweaks can be adjusted to suit your needs.

With that said, in this hypothetical scenario we would ideally want to alternate between squats and deadlifts in our periodization variety to ensure an equal emphasis of strength and hypertophy work is placed on both exercises. To maximize your progress with any training style, perform them in isolation in the order listed above. With the general order established, we can move on to exercise selection. With a seemingly endless variety of machines and movement patterns to choose from, exercise selection has the potential to be an overwhelming roadblock in any program.

To solve this problem, I suggest that you stick to the most common and versatile pieces of equipment and focus on specific movement patterns that emphasize strength, muscular balance, and injury prevention. These factors combine to give us a simple list of effective exercises that target both strength and hypertrophy and can be performed in nearly any gym. Within Fitstra programs, exercise selection is kept simple by encouraging the use of free weights and the avoidance of most fixed movement angle machines.

Barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, suspension trainers, and our own bodies comprise the majority of the equipment used. Feel free to incorporate any supplemental equipment to my list if it improves your sessions.

Now that we have our tools picked out, we need to know how to use them. Our bodies are really good at bending, twisting, and contorting in all sorts of different ways. High levels of mobility are great for daily functional capabilities, but not every movement needs to be trained under a heavy load. Instead, we want to focus on strengthening a few specific, multi-joint movements that can improve general physical performance across a wide variety of activities.

We might all have different hobbies and training goals, but we share the same basic movement patterns. As seen in the table above, the selected movement patterns are separated into three categories — upper body, lower body, and core.

The upper limb options are pretty straightforward with presses and pulls in both the horizontal and vertical planes. Lower limb patterns add a bit more variety but are still quite simple with a squat, hip hinge, and single leg emphasis. Planks, carries, and anti-rotational exercises are all examples of holds. When we perform these movement patterns with the recommended pieces of equipment, exercise selection becomes pretty simple.

Setting limits on the tools we use and the ways that we move allow us to keep our routines simple, focus on only the most effective exercises, and practice them frequently enough to become skilled at each one. For example, bodyweight chin ups on Monday followed by unilateral lat pulldowns on Thursday would hit both our frequency and variety targets for the vertical pull.

The exercise selection table above should provide you with enough options to make that possible. You may need to emphasize certain corrective exercises hamstring curls, external shoulder rotation, etc to help address any joint alignment issues or you might find that certain body parts arms, shoulders, etc need more single-joint volume to grow.

If you need a second pair of eyes to help evaluate postural deviations or assess imbalances, let me know. Hopefully we all now have a basic understanding of strength and hypertrophy, mechanical loading, periodization, training frequency limitations, concurrent order, and exercise selection based on movement patterns.

Because strength and hypertrophy are two complementary points on the same resistance training spectrum, we need to look at set and rep details from both perspectives to build an effective program. Reps can be short in duration and involve a single-joint or they can be lengthy and require multi-joint coordination to complete a sequence of movements. Sets allow us to attack a certain muscle or movement with structure and intent. Like reps, a single set can be simple and involve only one exercise or it can be a complex collection of movements and exercises of various styles circuit training.

However, in most cases, a set is just the rep count for one exercise. For example, if we perform a total of 30 push ups that are divided into 3 groups of 10 reps, we have completed 3 sets of push ups.

When reading any of the Fitstra programs and most others, sets always precede reps. As we briefly covered earlier in the microcycle training frequency section, research shows a positive dose-response relationship between total volume and gains for both strength and hypertrophy.

However, the optimal number of sets for these two points of emphasis vary quite a bit depending on training style and fitness experience. By comparing available studies, we can put together some helpful windows of set volume that apply to both beginners and trained lifters. As seen above, hypertrophy gains can require nearly twice as much weekly set volume as strength. This implies that it generally takes less time to improve neuromuscular efficiency than it does to grow new tissue. Instead, we need to operate within set volume ranges that allow us to improve both strength and hypertrophy without causing unnecessary amounts of CNS fatigue and muscular damage.

See how you respond to a certain volume and then make incremental modifications as necessary. The table below contains some recommended weekly set split options ranging from beginner to intermediate with the set totals and strength percentages listed at the bottom.

When Thursday arrives, every lat pull down set will emphasize hypertrophy. For a goal of 8 total sets of vertical pulling in a week, 3 sets will isolate strength chin ups on Monday and the remaining 5 will focus hypertrophy with lat pull downs on Thursday.

This strategy is used in both of the Fitstra Upper-Lower programs. To see how strength and hypertrophy can be combined on the same day, check out the Fitstra Legs Push Pull program. There are plenty of different ways to implement this weekly set split. Inter-set recovery times vary quite a bit from person to person under different training settings but in general, more is better.

If allowed to rest longer, we can lift more weight, restore a greater percentage of our baseline energy stores ATP , remove more of the metabolites lactate, ammonia, and hydrogen ions that build up during exercise, increase post exercise MPS to a greater degree when compared to shorter rest times , and keep intra-workout fatigue in check.

The more reps and sets you do, the more you'll move from training for pure strength to muscular gains. Simply put, hypertrophy training is the golden method designed to stimulated growth in the cells of your muscles. There are two types of training for hypertrophy :.

Have you heard of "the pump"? If so, then you're familiar with sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. This happens when fluid causes the muscles to swell and increase in volume. Think of bodybuilders before they step on stage for a show. Backstage, they will workout to make appear larger before they step out for judging.

While this is a form of hypertrophy it's a temporary form of growth. Now, if you're reading this article, you're probably looking for long-term aesthetic growth. As someone who is looking to increase their muscle size, you're looking to do more myofibrillar training.

This type of hypertrophy looks to increase the physical size of the muscular cells. Here's your go-to starter guide for achieving muscle growth or gains using hypertrophy training:. For the beginner lifter, hypertrophy is more difficult to achieve.

In the early stages of training, the body is making neural adaptations. But as you progress in your training program, you'll be able to focus on muscular growth.

Volume is a key component when you're training to increase the size of your muscles. In training, volume is the amount of reps and sets you complete of an exercise. When you're first starting to train, the volume of the program may seem light. This is to allow for your body to adapt. As the training program progresses, so will your volume.

Unlike other programs, volume is more important than increasing strength or the intensity of your movements. Volume allows for you to increase the amount of metabolic stress put on your body. Training with with volume in mind means there's more potential for growth of your muscle fibers. In an aggregated study by the University of New Mexico, they discovered that volume is a contributing factor towards building muscle size. They reviewed the Journal of Applied Physiology where a study found the participants with high-volume training showed a greater increase in muscle size compared to those with lower volume training.

So when you're in the process of creating your training program, be sure to include increased training volume over time. You'll be on your way to hypertrophy-specific training HST in no time! Taking reps at a controlled pace—a few seconds on the way down, pause, and a few seconds on the way up—puts more stress on muscles to help them grow and builds stability in your connective tissues. This is a natural question to ask as you're beginning the journey to size.

As there's no blanket answer for everyone. As your strength increases, then your max lifts will also increase. Since bodybuilders have been trying to get huge since the dawn of strength sports, plenty of research has been done to pinpoint the magic numbers of sets and reps to achieve hypertrophy. Now let's talk about how often you should lift. A major contributor to this training is how often you work various muscle groups.

The more often you're able to work with various groups under tension, then the closer you'll get to reaching your goal. An overlooked but equally important ingredient to proper training is rest. That goes for both rest periods within your workouts and the rest you take between workouts.

Even the best athletes have a rest day programmed into their training. This will allow for your muscles to regain some, but not all, of their energy stores before the next set. Starting from zero, you'll want to be aware of the phases of building muscular definition before drawing your action plan.

The phases of training are the adaption, hypertrophy specific training hst and maintenance stages. Each training stage has nearly the same ideal quantity of days you should be weight training per week. The slight adjustment in frequency and what you should be doing within each phase is vital to building your muscle tissue. Now that we've reviewed the science behind muscle growth, the difference between strength-focused training, and the importance of volume, let's get to putting all the pieces in action!

If the plan is to bulk up, your body will need to first adapt to lifting heavy weights for several repetitions. Your joints and muscles need to be conditioned for hypertrophy training so each movement can be performed safely through its full range of motion. When you're first starting your training phase, it's important to focus on how your body moves through each motion.

As your strength and volume increase, pay close attention to how your body moves under tension. Are you completing the reps and set with good form? It's easy to sacrifice form in order to "complete" the set. However, this does not work the muscles appropriately. You will not only sacrifice gains for that particular muscle or muscle group but you also open yourself to everyone's least favorite word: injury.

Monitoring your movements will prepare and enhance your long-term performance while reducing the risk of injury. If you're injured then you won't be able to workout and no one wants that.

During the adaptation phase, you should be participating in weight training roughly times per week. This stage lasts weeks and can be mentally challenging. Be prepared to experience soreness. While adapting to this form of exercise, your body's physiological response can be quite painful. Your body will likely be feeling sore and achy for days as it gets used to muscle fibers breaking down and repairing. This is a normal feeling during this phase. The adaptation phase requires the most patience.

Stay hydrated. Avoid ice baths. Cold water immersion has been shown to attenuate the acute anabolic process and long term adaptations in muscles 4. Concluding thoughts In conclusion, muscular hypertrophy is nothing more than a physiological adaptation to imposed physical and metabolic demands. Check out these relevant resources if you enjoyed this blog! Lucett SC.

Post-exercise cold water immersion attenuates acute anabolic signalling and long-term adaptations in muscle to strength training. J Physiol. Related Posts. Sign up to receive content, exclusive offers and so much more from NASM. Popular Recent. By Brad Dieter. Fast-Twitch Vs. Allison Brager. Physiological Improved cardiovascular efficiency Beneficial endocrine and serum lipid adaptations Increased bone density Increased lean body mass Increased metabolic efficiency Increased muscular hypertrophy Decreased body fat Decreased physiological stress.

Performance Increased tissue tensile strength Increased power Increased endurance. Psychological Improved mood Improved self-esteem Improved ability to cope with stress Improved perception of body image Decreased symptoms associated with depression. Self-myofascial Release. Dynamic Stretching. Push-up with Rotation.