The 3 essential training methods for building muscle
The 3 essential training methods for building muscle
By Travis Pollen | 04/01/15
Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/3-essential-workout-methods-for-muscle
Here's what you need to know...
- There are three mechanisms of hypertrophy: mechanical stress, metabolic stress, and muscle damage. If you neglect any one of these mechanisms, you're giving up a lot of potential muscle growth.
- Mechanical tension is synonymous with muscle strength. There is an ideal point near the 1RM weight where tension is at its highest.
- For optimal metabolic stress ("the pump"), you must maintain constant tension in the muscles by reversing the direction of movement just before reaching the hyperextended position at the highest point and just before reaching the lowest point of the range of motion.
- To induce muscle damage, you need to adjust the volume according to your training split. Too much will give you too much muscle soreness and make it impossible for you to recover in time for the next training session.
- The most versatile exercises are those that can be manipulated accordingly to target each of these three mechanisms. This applies to the major multi-joint exercises.
- Use all three of these mechanisms during a single training session or cycle them throughout your training week.
The 3 ways to build muscle
Ask the most muscular guys at your gym for advice on building muscle and you'll likely get different answers:
"Just train heavy," the powerlifter will tell you.
"Aim for the pump," the bodybuilder will tell you.
"Do something different," the CrossFitter will tell you.
Each of these suggestions makes sense, but for optimal development, you need to combine all three.
In fact, a 2010 review paper by Brad Schoenfeld showed that there are three mechanisms of hypertrophy - mechanical tension, metabolic stress and muscle damage - which align perfectly with the maxims above.
1 - Mechanical tension: train heavy
Mechanical tension means good old fashioned training with heavy weights. It's all about generating the most muscle power possible through the full range of motion.
You may think that the heavier you train, the more mechanical tension you generate. However, this is only the case up to a certain point. For example, a 2013 study by Pinto and colleagues found that muscle activation during isometric bench presses was lower than muscle activation when using 90% of maximum weight in a consciously induced contraction.
These results suggest that for most exercisers there is an "ideal point" below the maximum weight for a repetition (1RM weight) where the mechanical tension of the target muscles is at its highest. Adding extra weight will not increase mechanical tension and could even shift tension from the target muscles to passive structures or other muscles.
The participants in this study would therefore be better advised to work at 90% of their maximum weight and no more, as this will enable them to perform more repetitions at the same or higher tension, allowing them to achieve more time under tension.
Finding the ideal weight
When it comes to weight, the ideal point will vary from person to person and even from exercise to exercise. For an advanced exerciser with favorable anthropometrics and clean exercise execution form on a given exercise, the ideal point might be at the lower end of the 3 to 8 repetition range.
For a less experienced exerciser whose exercise execution form deteriorates when training with heavy weights - or even an experienced exerciser whose body proportions are not ideal for a particular exercise - the ideal point could shift upwards into the 5 to 12 repetition range.
Some exercises such as rowing and hip thrusts (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8nFGuY77CE ) are better suited to slightly higher repetitions regardless of the exerciser's limb length and technical ability.
Pilot data has shown that gluteus activation increases almost linearly with weight for some exercisers, while other exercisers reach their maximum gluteus activation at just 50% of their 1RM weight.
For these exercisers, further increases in training weight will result in further increases in muscle activation in other synergistic muscles, but not in the actual primary muscles being targeted. However, a recent paper by Vigotsky and colleagues showed a fairly linear increase in leg flexor activation with an increase in weight in Good Mornings, suggesting that it all depends on the exercise.
How do you know where your individual ideal point is for a particular exercise? Use your intuition and let technique be your guide. If your exercise form is severely lacking or you can't move a weight all the way up, then it's too heavy.
To maximize mechanical tension, you can also use strategic pauses such as at the lowest position of the bench press, right after the start of the deadlift in deadlifts and at the end of hip thrusts.
Here are the parameters for mechanical tension:
- Sets: 3-8
- Repetitions: 3-8 or 5-12 (depending on the exerciser and the exercise)
- Tempo: 2/0/1/0, 2/0/1/3 or 2/3/1/0
- Rest intervals: 2-3 minutes
The tempo indicates the time in seconds for the eccentric (negative) phase of the movement, the transition to the concentric phase of the movement, the concentric (lifting) phase of the movement and the transition to the eccentric phase of the movement.
2 - Metabolic stress: training for pump and muscle burn
Metabolic stress is basically the same as training for pump or muscle burn.
The key here is to maintain constant tension in the muscles by maintaining a continuous cadence (no pauses between repetitions) and, depending on the strength curve of the movement, reversing the movement just before reaching the highest or lowest point of the range of motion.
In this way, blood is pumped through the arteries into the muscles and the continuous muscle contractions prevent the blood from draining through the veins, resulting in a higher degree of metabolic stress and increased swelling of the muscle cells.
To maintain constant tension on the muscles during exercises with a descending or constant force curve (exercises that get heavier or stay the same weight during the concentric phase) such as hip thrusts and inverted rows (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G28qN9FCKE), you should reverse the direction of movement just before the lowest point of the range of motion.
For exercises with an ascending strength curve (exercises that become lighter during the concentric phase) such as squats and deadlifts with extended legs, reverse the movement just before reaching an overreach and add supportive resistance in the form of bands or chains. For an even higher level of metabolic stress, you can use strategic pauses at the lowest point of the range of motion in these exercises.
If you are training for the pump, you should perform the sets at moderate to high repetitions and short rest intervals between sets until momentary muscle failure.
A pump training session would look like this:
- Sets: 3-4
- Repetitions: 12-20+ (until momentary muscle failure)
- Tempo: 1/0/1/0 or 2/3/1/0
- Rest intervals: shorter than one minute
3 - Muscle Damage: Focus on the negative repetitions
Muscle damage roughly corresponds to muscle soreness. Muscle soreness is caused by slow negative repetitions, an extended range of motion and increased tension in the stretched position of the muscle. Changes in exercise selection can also induce muscle soreness.
However, too much muscle damage can also be disabling and counterproductive, which is why the training volume must be adapted to the training split and the training frequency. If you use a split by muscle group, where you only train a muscle once a week, you can use up to 5 sets of an exercise focusing on muscle damage - after all, you have a whole week to recover.
However, if your training split requires you to train a muscle or exercise several times a week, then you simply can't afford to get that much muscle soreness. If your muscles are not healed by the time you train them again, your performance will undoubtedly be impaired.
To induce less muscle damage in this case, but still significant to some degree, you could perform two sets of an exercise with a focus on muscle damage so that the muscle damage caused by it has healed by the time you train the muscle again.
A workout for muscle damage could look like this:
- Sets: 2-5 (depending on the training frequency)
- Repetitions: 8-12
- Tempo: 4/0/1/0
- Rest intervals: 1-2 minutes
Small modifications to the major multi-joint exercises
Although certain exercises are better suited to one mechanism than the others, the most versatile exercises are those where each of the three mechanisms of hypertrophy can be selectively targeted by slightly modifying the execution of the exercise.
By and large, the basic major multi-joint exercises - squats, deadlifts, hip thrusts, bench presses, overhead presses, pull-ups and rowing - are well suited for this purpose.
Here is a list of the modifications needed in each exercise to elicit the different mechanisms of hypertrophy. Perform the exercises with the sets, repetitions, tempos and additional instructions listed below.
Regardless of the desired mechanism, perform all exercise variations with a direct focus on the target muscle. Never use a weight that is so heavy that you lose the mind-muscle connection.
|
Exercise |
Variation |
Sets |
|
Tempo |
|
Squats |
||||
|
Mechanical tension |
Barbell front squats |
3-8 |
3-8 |
2/0/1/0 |
|
Metabolism. Stress |
Paused barbell front squats, reverse the movement just before fully extending the legs |
3-4 |
8-12+ |
2/3/1/0 |
|
Muscle Damage |
Deep barbell front squats |
2-5 |
8-12 |
4/0/1/0 |
|
Deadlift |
||||
|
Mechanical tension |
Barbell deadlift with pause at the lowest point of the movement |
3-8 |
3-8 |
2/0/1/2 |
|
Metabolism. Stress |
Touch-and-go barbell deadlift, reverse the direction of movement just before the highest and lowest points of the movement |
3-4 |
12-20+ |
1/0/1/0 |
|
Muscle Damage |
Dumbbell deadlift with straight legs |
2-5 |
8-12 |
4/0/1/0 |
|
Hip Thrust |
||||
|
Mechanical tension |
Paused barbell hip thrusts |
3-5 |
5-12 |
2/0/1/3 |
|
Metabolism. Stress |
Hip Thrusts with bands or a barbell, reverse the direction of movement just before reaching the floor |
3-4 |
12-20+ |
1/0/1/0 |
|
Muscle Damage |
Barbell Hip Thrust, use an extended range of motion |
2-5 |
8-12 |
4/0/1/0 |
|
Bench Press |
||||
|
Mechanical tension |
Paused barbell bench press |
3-8 |
3-8 |
2/3/1/0 |
|
Metabolism. Stress |
Touch-and-go barbell bench press, reverse the movement just before hyperextending the arms |
3-4 |
12-20+ |
1/0/1/0 |
|
Muscle Damage |
Dumbbell bench press over as wide a range of motion as possible |
2-5 |
8-12 |
4/0/1/0 |
|
Overhead press |
||||
|
Mechanical tension |
Barbell press overhead |
3-8 |
3-8 |
2/0/1/0 |
|
Metabolism. Stress |
Overhead barbell press, reverse the movement just before hyperextending the arms |
3-4 |
12-20+ |
1/0/1/0 |
|
Muscle damage |
Dumbbell Arnold Press seated |
2-5 |
8-12 |
4/0/1/0 |
|
Pull-ups |
||||
|
Mechanical tension |
Paused pull-ups with additional weight |
3-8 |
3-8 |
2/0/1/3 |
|
Metabolism. Stress |
Pull-ups with body weight or supported by straps, reverse the movement before fully extending the arms |
3-4 |
12-20+ |
1/0/1/0 |
|
Muscle damage |
Pull-ups to the sternum |
2-5 |
8-12 |
4/0/1/0 |
|
|
||||
|
Mechanical tension |
Pendlay Rows (rowing bent forward with slightly bent knees from the floor) |
3-5 |
5-12 |
2/0/1/3 |
|
Metabolism. Stress |
Dumbbell rowing bent over |
3-4 |
12-20+ |
1/0/1/0 |
|
Muscle damage |
Suspension Trainer Inverted Row(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqsZ4Ml5wrg), turn the handles outwards during the concentric phase |
2-5 |
8-12 |
4/0/1/0 |
Planning your training sessions
Leave nothing to chance and maximize your muscle growth. You probably already perform most of the exercises described above. All that is necessary is a small modification to the execution - be it a longer eccentric phase, additional strategic rests or more repetitions - and you will achieve maximum gains.
Since the three mechanisms of hypertrophy complement each other, it is best to use a daily undulating or non-sequential periodization scheme instead of a linear model.
Daily undulating periodization
Use the three mechanisms cyclically over the course of a week: one day for mechanical stress, the next for metabolic stress and the third for muscle damage.
Non-sequential periodization
Emphasize mechanical tension at the beginning of the training session or during the first sets of an exercise. Then move on to metabolic stress and muscle damage later in the training session or during the last sets of an exercise.
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