Category: Training

On Tuesday, in Categories of Weight Training: Part 5 I clarified some things regarding volume and then looked briefly at the issue of both training frequency and a bit at exercise selection.    Today I’ll wrap up the discussion of hypertrophy training, summarizing all of this mess and looking at some popular programs and how they do (or don’t) match the information I’ve presented at the very end.

This will allow me to talk about maximal strength in the next part of the series and then either look at Brad Schoenfeld’s new paper (comparing low and high repetition ranges on growth) or power training methods.  I haven’t decided what order to write in.

Today is going to be sort of a grab-bag of topics, some of which will hopefully answer some of the questions I’ve seen in the comments, some of which will probably leave you with more questions than answers.  Thus is the balance of the universe is maintained. … Keep Reading

So last time in Categories of Weight Training: Part 4, I continued with the discussion of hypertrophy by addressing the issue of volume.  In that article, looking at a recent review paper by Wernbom, I threw out a value of 30-60 repetitions as giving the apparently maximal growth response.  Before I move on to other topics, let me clarify a few issues.  Then I’ll look at training frequency and exercise selection.

Training Volume Revisited.

First and foremost, something I idiotically left out of the article but got asked about on the forum and in the comments, that volume recommendation of 30-60 reps is PER MUSCLE GROUP.  Not PER WORKOUT total.  So if you were working 4 muscle groups or something in a workout, that’d yield a total of 120-240 repetitions.   How many sets that would end up being would, of course, depend on the reps per set.

Now, one complication here is the issue of overlap between muscle groups since most people aren’t training single muscles at once.   … Keep Reading

In  Categories of Weight Training: Part 3 I continued with a look at hypertrophy training by talking a bit about the impact of anabolic steroids (which has caused a lot of very silly ideas to come into vogue) and then began to talk about loading parameters focusing on intensity (with a bit of related commentary about repetition ranges).

As I discussed in that article, due to the variety of pathways involved in stimulating growth (which may act independently or interact somehow) combined with the potential for different “types” of growth and the further potential of fiber type specific growth, you tend to see the widest range of intensities being at least potentially useful for stimulating at least some kind of muscle growth.

On average, intensity for the hypertrophy range is typically given to be anywhere from 60% to 85% of 1 repetition max, yielding an effective repetition range of anywhere from 20 reps per set (at 60% 1RM) down to about 5 (85%). … Keep Reading

In Categories of Weight Training: Part 2, I bored you with some of the underlying physiology behind hypertrophy training   In that article I discussed the issue of hypetrophy vs. hyperplasia as well as the idea that there are different types of hypertrophy (i.e. sarcoplasmic vs. myofibrillar), I also looked a bit at some of the underlying physiology of what stimulates muscle growth in terms of tension, fatigue and muscle damage (with some brief commentary about the hormonal response issue).

Today I want to use that as background to talk about hypertrophy training in more practical terms in the same way I did about metabolic training back in Part 1.  I’ll start with some more general comments and then talk about intensity/rep range as a loading parameter, saving other aspects of hypertrophy training for the next parts of the series.

Now, compared to other types of training, it seems as if you see the greatest variety in what can stimulate or generate hypertrophy in terms of the different types of training that has been done or that seems to be “effective” on one level or another.… Keep Reading

In the introductory part of this series, I made a quick introduction to the series and talked about metabolic/depletion type training.  I won’t sum any of it up here, just click the link.  In that article, I also listed the three primary types of training I wanted to talk about and listed the second type as “hypertrophy training” which is what I am going to talk about for the next several parts of the series.

Today, in an effort to confuse everyone including myself, I’m going to re-categorize that one initially as “growth training”, then babble about a bunch of underlying physiology that nobody cares about and then go right back to calling it hypertrophy training.

Goals of Growth Training

The explicit goal of growth training is building bigger muscles although there can be a variety of reasons most wish to achieve this goal.  One would be to provide a base for increased strength or power performance since larger muscles are potentially stronger muscle.  … Keep Reading