What is hypertrophy?

Triggering muscle growth is one of the primary goals of strength training. Whether your goal is to look absolutely jacked, or just to get “toned” (I hate that term,) increasing muscle mass is the primary goal you are striving for. The scientific term for “increase in muscle mass” is hypertrophy. Muscular hypertrophy is one of the two primary mechanisms by which your body develops strength (the other being neurological motor recruitment – basically teaching your brain how to talk to your muscles more effectively.)

However, there are a TON of myths and fallacies out there about how to accomplish this goal. My goal, in this article, is to address these myths, and use science to show you how to gain muscle mass, regardless of what style of resistance training you do.

Resistance is Key​

So when I say “resistance training,” what exactly do I mean?  Well, the primary form of resistance training most people are familiar with is, to quote an old commercial, picking things up and putting them down.  Any time you’re moving a weight of some kind, you’re doing resistance training.  However, in a broader sense, resistance training is any time your muscles are resisting an outside force.  This can be gravity, elastic bands, or even water!

Weightlifting is resistance training. Bodyweight exercises like push ups and pull ups are resistance training.  Resistance band and tube exercises are resistance training.  Cable machines are resistance training.  In some sense, even swimming is resistance training (although to be fair, it’s primarily a cardiovascular exercise, not a resistance exercise.)  This means that every single one of these exercise styles can be used to trigger muscular hypertrophy, AKA build muscle mass.

The Secret of Hypertrophy: Muscular Fatigue and Failure​

So, the secret to encouraging your body to increase your muscle fiber size and strength is to convince it that it NEEDS more muscle to do something.  We do this by making it progressively fail at performing a task.  Basically, if you tell your body to do a push up until is can’t, your body is going to say “Oh crap, I wasn’t able to perform that task!  What if I need to do that task to save myself from a cave bear, or gather enough berries to survive the winter?!  I better make those muscles better!”

The science is this:  As your muscle fibers get fatigued, your body recruits more muscle fibers to the cause.  As THESE fibers get fatigued, your body tries to recruit MORE.  Over the course of a workout, your body starts to run out of fibers to recruit, so it tries to make the fibers it’s already recruited work harder.  Eventually, though, all recruited fibers have no “juice” left to perform the task, and they basically give up.

When your body reaches this point, it basically makes a “mental note” to recruit extra protein molecules and other chemicals to rebuild the muscle fibers bigger and thicker than they were before, so they can move more of a load next time.  This is how progressive overload occurs, and how your body’s muscular hypertrophy mechanisms work.  We exploit this response to grow bigger muscles on purpose!

So Should I Train to Failure Every Time?​

ABSOLUTELY NOT!

Forgive the caps lock, but I needed to get that point across. Training to failure every time on every exercise is a great way to injure yourself, slow your progress, put your body into a panicked state, and completely derail your fitness goals.  Also, failing reps tends to build bad movement patterns, which can actually make you weaker and more prone to injury over the long term.

HOWEVER, training close to failure most of the time on some exercises is a great way to get hypertrophy effects in a much healthier, long-term-sustainable way.  So, if you’re doing a bodyweight routine and you’re focused on growing your pectoral muscles (chest muscles,) you want to do push ups in a way that takes you right to the edge of “can’t do any more.”  You can accomplish this by doing tons of push ups, but I prefer to take this one step further by performing the reps with a very slow eccentric and fast concentric pace (check out the article on Tempo from last week here!)

These principles apply to all exercise styles, as I mentioned.  You can often start with a heavy compound motion like a bench press or barbell squat to take your muscles near the point of fatigue (because heavy loads make the fibers fatigue faster,) and then finish with safer sub-maximal loads (like a couple of higher rep backdown squats at a lower weight.)

Don’t Forget to Isolate!​

Now, most of what we’ve talked about so far have been compound exercises – exercises that recruit a large group of muscles to accomplish a goal.  This is great for overall fitness, but if you’re trying to grow a single muscle like, say, your biceps, this could be less than ideal. 

Consider the chin up – it uses your biceps and your lats primarily, but since your lats are much more involved in the movement (and much stronger than your biceps typically,) becoming too fatigued to do a chin up doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to trigger bicep growth.  You may be failing the task because your lats are too fatigued, but your biceps still have some juice left in them!  This is why, if you’re looking to trigger growth in a specific muscle, you should always finish off with some isolation work on that muscle.  In this example, some variant of bicep curl would probably be ideal.  In this respect, people who work out using weights have the edge over bodyweight enthusiasts, as most bodyweight exercises are compound movements, and it can be difficult to isolate individual muscles.

Let’s Wrap it Up​

To review: Repeatedly taking your muscles to task failure or near task failure is the best way to trigger muscular hypertrophy, and this principle holds true across all forms of resistance training.  Now, this article is just covering workout styles, and leaving out two other crucial parts of the hypertrophy puzzle: Nutrition and recovery.  We’ll address those in future posts.  I hope, however, you’ve learned today that no matter what kind of resistance training you prefer, you can build muscle mass as long as you work out in a smart manner!

I’ll see you next time.  Until then, live boldly, change the world, and continue to be awesome!

Dan Wallace