Muscle Building Basics

Key Points:

• Muscle growth typically requires some mechanical tension or load, reasonable proximity to failure, and a reasonably large range of motion
• Growth is typically greater if we also improve mind-muscle connection, manipulate rest periods, and increase weekly volume (with an upper limit)
• Never underestimate the importance of proper nutrition!

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Muscle Growth Basics

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Muscle growth (AKA hypertrophy) is a commonly-sought-after goal. Whether for aesthetics, performance, or other reasons, lots of people want to put on muscle mass.

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But how do we get there?

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The science is still not 100% clear on all of the mechanisms behind muscle growth. However, there are some common factors that seem to contribute from the practical side:

1. Mechanical tension: You’re probably not going to get bigger if you don’t load the muscles you want to grow. So some amount of tension/load is likely required.
2. Proximity to failure: You’re also unlikely to grow muscle if your workouts are super easy. If you’re doing 10 reps with a weight you could do for 30+ reps, your muscles probably don’t care about those 10 reps.
3. Range of motion: Working a muscle through a larger range of motion seems to help muscle growth. Whether that’s because of “micro-tears”, “neural fatigue”, etc., we’re not really sure, but larger motions seem to be better for growth.

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From here, there’s a lot of fine tuning, individualization, and guesswork involved. Some factors to consider include:

1. Manipulating volume: Doing a minimum amount of work with each muscle group (usually thought of sets per week) probably helps. Doing more will probably help to an extent, but may hurt your recovery if you’re new to lifting.
2. Rep ranges: As long as you are getting close to failure, the specific number of reps you do probably doesn’t matter. However, lots of people benefit from training across a wide range of reps and weights.
3. Compound vs isolation: Both work for building muscle. If you are someone who responds to higher volumes, more isolation work will probably help you get there.
4. Manipulating rest: Common wisdom for a long time was that less rest is better, but longer rests can let you lift more weight for more reps, which may mean more gains.

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Sidebar: The Paradox of “Toning”

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I’ve had plenty of clients say that, “I don’t lift heavy weights because I don’t want to bulk up” or “I just want to tone”. While I understand the intent behind these statements, they both miss the point of how muscle building works.

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As mentioned above, heavy weights may or may not help you as an individual get bigger. What’s more important is whether you’re training close to failure.

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If you lift like a powerlifter or an Olympic lifter - namely, heavy, with relatively low volume - you may put on some mass, but you won’t look anything like dedicated bodybuilders.

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Further, “bulking up” successfully is a process of years. No one accidentally turns into the Hulk. Even if you’re what we call a “hyper-responder” to resistance training, it will probably take months to notice changes.

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Lastly, in order to “tone” a muscle, you have to 1) make the muscle bigger and 2) get rid of the fat surrounding it. We can’t directly control the latter (“spot reduction” is not a thing), but losing fat overall will help. But if you just get lean and don’t have any muscle mass, you won’t look “toned” then, either.

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*steps off soapbox*

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Prescription:

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If we put together a bunch of the methods above, our program should include the following:

1. Multiple days per week of training: This could be a 3-day full-body split, a 6-day push/pull/legs split, etc.
2. Moderate to high volume: Probably at least 10 sets per muscle group per week. See below for specifics.
3. Varying types of load: The weight should probably be >30% of a 1 repetition maximum, but otherwise is not all that important. If you want to also get stronger, make sure some of your sets are on the lower-rep, higher-weight end of the spectrum.
4. Training close to failure: Leaving 0-4 reps “in the tank” should be fine, but more than that may not stimulate the growth you want.
5. Moderate to short rest intervals: Typically at least 30 seconds between sets, but possibly up to 3 minutes.

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As you can see, there’s a lot of wiggle room here. Different people will respond differently to all of the methods. Some suggestions to get you started:

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Figure out how many days per week you can lift. More days are not inherently better, and you should be realistic with what you can actually do.

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Good programs to get you looking in the right direction would include this 4-day split, this PPL split, or this 4- or 6-day split.

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Days Per Week

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If you can do 2 or 3 days per week, you’re probably better off with a full-body split. This means you will work upper and lower body exercises each day.

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If you can do 4 days per week, you can look at an upper/lower split, where you do 2 days of upper body and 2 days of lower body.

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If you can do 6 days per week, you can get into a push/pull/legs split, where you do all pushing upper body exercises on one day, then pulling exercises the next, then legs (the days don’t have to follow this order). Add 1 rest day to that mix and you have a full week of training.

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All of these can work for building muscle. For you specifically to build muscle, you need to decide what’s realistic for you and develop a plan with which you can be consistent.

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Volume Per Week

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Most muscle groups for most people most of the time will need a minimum volume of [about 4-10 sets per week] to stimulate growth, with a maximum volume potentially 2-3 times as large depending on training age, exercise frequency, etc.

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If you’re doing a 3-day full-body split and you want to make sure you get enough volume to build your quads (the muscles on the front of your thighs), you could do 3-5 hard sets of quad work each time you hit the gym and expect to see some growth over time.

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This obviously requires you to have some idea of what exercises work which muscle groups. There is also a lot of overlap in many exercises. For example, does bench press primarily work the pecs or the triceps? The answer [depends on how you do it].

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The important thing here is making sure that you’re getting somewhere around that 12-16 set number to start. Even if there’s a lot of overlap, you’ll see for yourself whether the exercises you’ve chosen work for you. Remember, building muscle is a long-term commitment, so you’ll have time to tweak things if they aren’t working.

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Progression

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Unlike getting stronger, building muscle does not always require us to add more weight over time. However, it does require that we keep doing the things that help our muscles grow.

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So, it makes sense that we will probably need to add weight over time to keep us relatively close to failure with an exercise without having to just do more and more reps. Again, this is not strictly necessary for growth, but most people will notice that added weight (once they get stronger) means more stimulus for growth.

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What will probably happen as you build muscle is that you will need more volume. In fact, well-trained individuals will often need substantially more volume than untrained folks.

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This, as with many factors in building muscle, will be pretty subjective. When you get to a point that you feel like your gains are plateauing and you haven’t looked at your training volume in a while, that might be a good lever to pull.

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Nutrition

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This is really a huge topic unto itself, and one on which I am not qualified to speak on at length. If you have nutrition questions, talk to a dietitian.

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With that being said, there are some basics of nutrition that are probably close to universally accepted and that are probably pretty important to gaining muscle:

1. You need sufficient protein.
2. It will probably help if you are eating more calories than you are burning (i.e. you should probably be in a caloric surplus).

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How much protein each individual needs will vary, and even the experts disagree on the exact amount you should get per day. The Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for protein is 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight per day, but this is almost certainly too low for optimizing muscle growth.

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If you want to be on the right track, you should probably shoot for at least 1.2 g/kg/day (0.55 g/lb/day), and may go as high as 2.2 g/kg/day (1 g/lb/day).

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Timing of protein intake probably doesn’t matter that much, as long as you don’t try to get all of your protein in one shot. Most recommendations are to spread your intake across 3-4 meals.

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Aside from that, eating enough calories in general to stay in a bit of a surplus along with getting enough protein is a great place to start.

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–

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On the one hand, building muscle is pretty simple: You need to stress your muscles, and doing so more often in a larger range of motion and getting them closer to failure probably helps.

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On the other hand, the number of other levers you can pull to optimize your gains is staggering. If you’re just getting started, these are probably way less important than just getting to the gym and eating enough food. If you’re more experienced and haven’t played around with some of these options yet, you probably should at some point.

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