Deeper into Muscle Growth (part 2)
Does the perfect workout exist

In previous articles we have started to look at Hypertrophy (muscle growth) and some of the ways to achieve it. This month I would like to attempt to put some real substance to the discussion and see if we can start to come up with strategies that will actually help us pack on some beef.

You will find that the more you research the elements of muscle growth the more in depth and complicated the subject becomes. For the purposes of this paper it seems sensible to simply cut to the chase and explore how research and science can help us organise our training to achieve the results that we require. However, if any of you guys want more information on goodies such as Sarcomere architecture, Z Disc disruption, Up & Down stream signalling and Cellular Pathways please let me know and I will be happy to share as much information as I have.

Ok, lets start to look at the fundamentals, we are looking to establish a progressive resistance training program that will result in an adaptation response from our bodies. The “Holy Trinity” of bodybuilding is: Stimulate Growth, Supply and assimilate Nutriments and Recovery. Each of these are complete topics in their own right and each could occupy several articles. However, we are here to talk about the initial stage of stimulating growth.

There are so many variables to take into account such as experience, whether natural or enhanced, age etc that it is impossible to describe one perfect work out but certain underlying rules will apply.

Muscle growth tends to be triggered by 2 main factors, physical stress on the muscles and the resulting Metabolic adaptations. The first thing we need to look at therefore is the stress we place on the muscle when we are in the gym. “Breaking down muscle tissue” is not really an accurate description of what we are doing but it will do for the time being. In attempting to “break down” the tissue we will go thru 3 phases of most exercises, the concentric or upwards movement of the weight, the isometric or static hold and squeeze at the top of the movement and the eccentric or downwards movement of the weight. When going thru these phases the very first thing we need to ensure is that our form is as perfect as we can make it, seeing videos of Branch or Ronnie using immense weights over a very short, fast range of movement might work for them but almost certainly wont work for you. These guys have the freaky genetics that allow them to grow almost in spite of what they do rather than because of it. The rest of us mere mortals need to pay some attention to the fundamental rules and rule number one is good form on everything!!

We therefore need to take the movement from full extension to full contraction concentrating particularly on the eccentric (downwards) phase, multiple research has shown that this negative element is at least as important as the upwards movement, if not more so. You will be considerably stronger when lowering the weight as opposed to raising it and the time it takes to perform this part of the movement should therefore be longer to take advantage of this. The time it takes to complete a single rep is know by sports scientists as “Time under Tension” (TUT) and is normally depicted as e.g. 1 - 1 - 2 which would indicate 1 second up, 1 second squeeze on contraction and 2 seconds down. The whole question of differing TUT’s to achieve optimum strength and /or size has been the subject of considerable debate and is something worth experimenting with but I would suggest that a good starting place is the plan mentioned above or 1 - 1 - 3, believe me a 3 second negative phase is a lot longer than it sounds once you’ve got past the first few reps! An advanced strategy will be to include some negative only reps at the end of a standard set, taking up to 30 seconds to lower the weight. Be careful with these as if anything is gonna make you sore it’s these and they will take a while to recover from.

Moving on to exercise volume, this really looks at the number of reps completed and the number of sets we should be considering for each muscle group. Over the years a huge variety of advice has been given on these subjects ranging from the “Heavy Duty”/”High Intensity” style when only 1 or 2 sets are used thru to the various high volume training styles where you seem to spend a day and a half on each muscle!! The truth as ever is not at all cut and dried but does follow a few basics. There is a wealth of research papers indicating that reps between 8 - 12 are best to achieve growth and that multiple sets are better than single sets. My own personal experimentation of these issues lead me to believe that for an experience athlete a set range between 16 - 20 for a big body part (Chest, Back, Legs and Delts) and about half of that for biceps and triceps is about right. Rep range becomes interesting and my own tend to vary enormously, from 6 - 8 for some of my primary compound movements (after warm up), thru to over 20 for a couple of sets to conclude a session. The “guts” of my reps outside of this will however be in the aforementioned 8 - 12 range.

I enjoy the strength benefits of the lower reps and the denser look it seems to give a physique but be aware that we are still looking to build size not merely demonstrate strength and risk injury therefore be very careful about dropping reps much lower than 6. Good form on these lower reps also becomes very important. After the bulk of the work out has been completed at mid range reps I then often include at least 2 high rep sets to ensure that the muscle is engorged with blood. When building muscle we need to ensure that it has an optimum blood supply and we can start to encourage capillary growth to carry the blood and nutriments. Lack of blood supply to a muscle is known as muscle ischemia and will result in the atrophy or shrinkage of the muscle, for this reason alone a certain number of high rep sets seems to make all sorts of sense.

OK, we’ve looked at exercise form, T.U.T, set range and number of reps. Two other keys areas are intensity levels and exercise variation.

In order to get your body to grow you need to force it to adapt to new and unusual stimuli, if a muscle can perform a movement easily it certainly wont change in the way you want it to by getting bigger. We therefore have to make sure that our truly productive workouts are as intense as we can make them on the day without sacrificing the other areas discussed such as exercise form. These “balls to the wall” 110% type work outs can however can only be safely carried out for certain periods before signs of overtraining will start to show themselves. At Physical Frontiers we always work with our selves and our athletes in drawing up year round periodized plans giving full details of rest periods, full on weeks or months and taper periods leading up and down to and from these.

Adequate rest and recovery is just as important as the training itself as not only your muscular system takes a hammering during these times but also other areas such as your Central nervous system and Endocrine system, all of which need to be carefully looked after to perform at their optimum.

These periodized plans will always take into full account things such as level of experience, life style, nature of employment, nutritional status, if natural or not, if competitive or not and if so the dates of planned comps.

Once again this falls into our central ethos of keeping everyone as healthy as possible. The regular blood test we use and ask our athletes to use very quickly show if any of the major internal markers are falling out of line.

Exercise variation is also very important. Your body will adapt to a certain routine pretty quickly so changing the type of exercise performed, the equipment used or the rep ranges is important to maintain the level of stimulus you are looking to achieve.

Right then lets try and pull some of this together, as bodybuilders we are trying to achieve both Functional Hypertrophy (Myofibrillar Hypertrophy) which will make you stronger and Non Functional Hypertrophy (Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy) which will make you bigger.

Attention to all the points raised above will put you in a place to start or continue making progress.

Unfortunately there is no such thing as the perfect or “correct” work out, everything will work to an extent and there is definitely no such thing as the one and only perfect work out or style of training. No “magic bullets”!! don’t believe the hype!!

A full periodized plan over a period of a few months or a year is a very individual thing needing to take account of your personal situation and circumstances. Hopefully this article will give you some serious “food for thought” and if myself, Dean McTernan, Dr. Jass Lidder or any of our specialists at Physical Frontiers can be of any assistance you know who to call!!

Paul K Ehren
British Senior Champion 2010/11

Deeper into Muscle Growth (part 1) »