Hypertrophy
What is hypertrophy?
Hypertrophy is a scientific term for muscle growth or an increase in muscle mass due to an increase in size of the muscle fibers.
How do I train for hypertrophy?
Muscle growth happens primarily through progressive overload, where we are challenging the muscle with progressively increasing demands to cause it to adapt and grow. However, since the goal is hypertrophy (growth of the muscle size), we aren’t just aiming for pure strength here. In order to increase muscle size, we need to implement a variety of rep ranges and loads to build the size of our muscles.
The bulk of your muscle growth will happen through maximizing mechanical tension and applying progressive overload. The easiest way to think of this is lifting super heavy weights at lower rep ranges. High Load = High Mechanical Tension. Heavy compound movements should be the main lifts you prioritize and start with in your training.
A smaller, but still important piece of muscle growth is muscle damage. You feel this when you feel sore a day or two after training. Soreness isn't the best indicator of a “good workout”. It is simply an indicator of muscle damage, as a result of novelty. Novelty can be achieved through eccentrics, increased range of motion, or a new exercise (or one you haven't done in a while) this is generally done with Moderate Reps, and Moderate Weights
People tend to misinterpret this goal, so to clarify, I like to tell my clients that we’re aiming for “functional soreness”, where you can feel the muscles you worked, but you’re not debilitated. If you’re in so much pain that you can barely sit down on the toilet, or you’re sore for 6 days and can't work out, that’s TOO much soreness and ends up being counterproductive to our goal.
The last piece of the puzzle is metabolic stress, which you feel when you feel your muscles “burn” or notice a “pump”. We achieve this through higher reps, lighter weight and shorter rest periods. Think of this as a burnout or finisher at the end of the workout.
Read more about hypertrophy in these LWL articles
Can I spot-train with these hypertrophy principles?
Yes! But let us clarify. You CANNOT spot-reduce fat. For example, if your goal is a smaller waistline, doing core work will not make you lose belly fat.
You CAN spot-build muscle. This is due to the specificity of muscle growth. Building muscle uses a lot of energy and our bodies naturally like to conserve energy. So our bodies will only build muscle in the areas that you tell it to build muscle, based on your training program.
For example, If you do bicep curls, you are telling your body to build muscle in your biceps to handle the load you are lifting. Bicep curls specifically target your biceps so your body won’t build muscle in your legs, it will build muscle in your biceps.
