Hypertrophy

[David PvP]

Hi all,i need some advice on Hypertrophy training,i allready train for more than a decade but i seem to notice something very contradictory to the progressive overload tehnique,i mostly have two types of training,one is when i go heavy like dumbell press for chest with 100 lbs dumbells for 8 reps,and other is when i go around 80 lbs for 14 reps,i always notice i get a better stimulation and quality training with the second choice,and i always always feel a useless training when i go heavy as in if i dont contract the chest i cant feel the muscle working,i wonder if the vet's can undestand what i am talking about...since afther a while everybody should allready feel what works best,any toughts would be more than welcomed,it's been in my mind for the last decade so i had to ask.

Thanks all,
Dave.

[Igifuno]

Dave, this is a portion of a post by marcus on simulating hypertrophy and advanced training techniques that have proven very valuable for myself and many others on this forum. Enjoy and let me know if this doesn't answer your question:

1. This is just a reminder how I go about my training, many of you use different HIT approaches which is fine but for me these below work and they will also help some of you have a better understanding what this style is all about. I've seen many training styles being mixed up but I just want to get this out there for the people who are getting confused. It also explains some of the terminology I and others use.

Rep range
The ideal rep range for building size and stimulating hypertrophy is the 6 to 12 reps. Less than 6 reps will more or less increase strength and a degree of size, performing more than 12 reps will help build muscle endurance. Make sure that your reps fall within this range and your hitting true positive failure for the best chance of hypertrpohy. If your implementing one of the beyond failure methods such as forced & negs, rest pause or dropsetting you use a weight what is heavy enough to bring your positive failure at the low end of the rep range. An example for rest pause you use a weight what you will hit true positive failure at around the 4th rep then you would rest for around 10-15 seconds and do another couple of reps, then rest again for another 10-15 seconds and hit another 2 reps with the same weight. In total your doing 8 reps which is within range and your going to failure on each rest pause so you have a high chance of stimulating the right fibers to produce the best gains. As your rep range and strength increases towards a total of 12 reps you simple increase the weight being used so your constantly increasing intensity and overload, the two keys principles of any HIT programme. You use feeler sets to determine what weight you will be using on your working set, as you use different methods like dropsetting always makes sure you don't drop the weight to much so your not going over 12 reps in total. If you are you need to be using heavier weight on the drops so your rep range hits below the 12 reps in total. I always like to use around the 8 rep range in total and increase the reps upwards until I feel i can increase the weight so my rep range falls around the 8 rep range again. We are aiming for maximum muscle fiber recruitment hitting these rep ranges at failure will have the greatest potential for muscular growth. The above advice is for someone who is already advanced and is looking to build bigger thicker muscles, its not for someone who is building a base and foundation because these people can really benefit from using a lower rep range aswell as the above.


Stimulating growth
Remember going to true positive failure like I've describe previously hits the toughest muscle fibers what grow the biggest these are the fast twitch type 2b fibers, you hit these fibers and you will have the biggest chance of increasing in size. What we are aiming for is progression overload so you keep hitting the muscles with an increased weight so they need to change and adapt to the overload its being put under. This kind of continuous stress will have a reaction on the body and it will have no other alternative but to grow. We keep within the right rep range what stimulates the biggest growth and we continuously try and increase the intensity by increasing the reps then once the reps increase you increase the weight to bring the reps down within the correct range again. I can't stress enough about taking your muscle to true positive failure, this takes a lot of mental preparation. Before any muscle contraction occurs it originates from the brain sending signals to the nerves, the stronger the signal the more forceful the muscle contraction, in other words control your mind set pre working set and you will be in the best position to take your body to failure and beyond. I've commented many times how I go about doing my mental preparation but you master the mental side and you will see huge leaps in achieving your goals.Release the aggression by talking to your inner self and you will take your body to places its never been before. Stimulate growth by overloading your body to a state were its screaming for you to stop and no matter what you couldn't do one more rep even if your life depended on it, if you don't train in this fashion your not training hard enough.

Advanced training techniques
Forced and negatives
When your going to be implementing forced and negatives you need to be using a weight what your going to be hitting around the 3-4 rep range at true positive failure, then your spotter with help you with another 2 reps. I say 2 reps because its about the limit you can do once you have come to true positive failure and your partner is taking some of the weight off you, these forced reps will dig very deep into your muscle fiber recruitment. Once you have finished the forced reps the weight will be at the starting position and you start to complete negatives by lowering the weight very slowly, make sure you resist and fight the weight coming down and once at the bottom your partner will assist you to get the weight to the top of again and you will do another negative and you keep going until you cant do another negative, usually its around 2 negatives. Negatives done at this stage of a working set after positive muscle failure causes serious trauma to the muscle which will stimulate the release of growth factors. Your also 40% stronger on the eccentric part of the lift so once you hit failure in the lifting part of the exercise by yourself and adding forced with your partner the negatives will take you beyond and recruit further fibres like nothing I've experienced with any other training routine. Once this as been hit there is no need to do anything else because the damage has occurred and no more can be recruited only burn out and exhaustion. If we add the reps up you would be doing around 3-4 reps on the positive then 2 forced and then around 2 negative so in total your hitting around the 8 rep range. You have 3 strengths you have the positive, static and negative, the negative causes the most damage to the muscle and is the biggest cause of DOMS, you master negatives and you will see a huge improvement in muscle size and fullness.

Rest Pause
Again use a weight what you will be hitting true positive failure around the 3-4 reps range, put the weight down and rest for around 10-15 seconds which should give you around another 2 reps, then repeat and rest again and hit another 2+ reps again. Your completing a set of around 8 reps than you would normally use but your rest a couple of times within the set for around 10-15 second so you recover just enough to complete another 2 reps each time. This will recruit those tough type 2b muscle fibers and if you use your feeler sets correctly you can really cause some serious damage to your muscle and create an extreme amount of over load your body isn't use to. I like the 8 rep total mark but this isn't set in stone, you may prefer 10 reps in total or even 6 but just try and makes ure your in the 6-12 rep range and work from that to increase the intensity and overload.

Drop sets
This method needs a bit more thinking about but first lets explain what a drop set is. If we use DB curls for an example you would pick a weight again were you would be hitting around 3-4 reps at true positive failure and then get a set of lighter DB's and rep again for another couple of reps and then drop the weight again and curl another set of lighter bells for another 2-3 reps. You have to make sure you drop the weight enough to make sure you get around 2-3 reps out at failure but make sure you don't drop the weight to much, if your repping loads of reps out remember your trying to be hitting around the 8 rep range so when your doing your feeler sets its crucial to make the lighter db set just enough so you keep within the total rep range.

Halfs/quarters or partials
With partials you are doing a standard working set to which will involve you conducting a strict full range of motion to true positive failure, at this stage you would carry on doing half reps until its impossible to complete another half rep then do a quarter reps right down till you cant move the weight. A fine example would be DB side laterals were you would do strict reps till failure then carry on doing half reps so the DB's are only coming up half way then keep going till your hardly moving the weight from the side. There will be a bit of body assistance and sloppy form come into play towards the end but at this stage its fine just to get those deep muscle fibers working by going beyond failure. Extremely effective way to recruit those tough fibers we require with a constant tension approach.

Hit Supersets
Hit supersets entail you doing one exercise right after another with very little rest as in-between the two movements. With these types of supersets your still hitting the 6-12 rep range so your not doing anymore than 12 reps over two exercises, this is very important. Example you would go to true positive failure lets say on DB shoulder press and be at failure around the 5-6 rep then go straight into db side laterals for another 6 reps at the most which would be failure again. You have to make sure you use the right weight to hit the correct rep range so you don't go over the 12 rep ceiling otherwise you will trigger the muscle endurance and exhaustion and you wont tap into the tough fibers we require. Great examples is coupling compounds movements with isolation.


Combination
This protocol would consist of a combination of any of the above methods, you could use rest pause and on the second rest pause you may not be able to do anymore reps so you could go straight into a drop set to finish the working set of to failure and beyond. You could even use drop sets with partials on the last drop set to really increase the burn and intensity. The combination is endless, its how you feel to complete the workings set and what you need to do to make sure its a productive one. These are great for a back up plan if your working set starts to go wrong for any reason.

Rest
Using the above protocols is extremely tasking on your body and CNS so you need to make sure the training session are short but intense enough to stimulate growth. You also need to make sure you rest enough and have a good solid diet to suit your requirements. There is one thing for sure its impossible to train like this correctly for weeks on end, no matter how anabolic you are your going to need to pull back on the above movements and decrease the intensity and let the body fully repair and heal. This doesn't mean you have to stop training in this style just take a pullback training routine for a few weeks and lower the intensity and increase the rest days. Cortisol will fight against muscle growth so if you experience any over training symptoms its time to change things around to help your body repair and heal.


Feel sets
The feel sets are sets what you will do previous your working set, these sets are done so you can determine what weight you will be doing on your working set. Sometimes on my first feeler set it feels light and I'm very powerful so the next feeler set I will put some poundage on and see how that feels, again if that feels easy I know I can go heavier on my working set. I also take in consideration what I am going to be doing whether its forced and negs or rest pause or drops, I just judge a weight what I will be hitting failure around the 4th - 6th rep mark or less and then incorporate the beyond failure protocols. I also remember what I did last time I did that movement because in the back of my mind I know I have to overload my body. I am always pushing heavier weights or trying to increase the intensity.

[David PvP]

Awesome advice,thank you Igifuno,i just tryed yesterday a shoulder workout and did some side laterals drop sets it was awesome,God bless

[NaijaBoy]

I recently stopped lifting super heavy. I've realized that my joints have taken a beating for the many years i've lifted heavy and due to my profession, I do not want to have messed up joints 10 years from now. The later kind workout the OP stated is what i've started doing and is working great for me. I'm not crazy about getting much bigger anymore.

[David PvP]

true words there,i think i will try the tehniques Igifuno sugested from Marcus's info,new muscle can be found with weights under those high maxes,and i think my joints will thank me alot,my shoulder allready has some words with me so i dont wanna push it

[hekki]

very interesting information. knowing that in the HIT superset you combine both exercises reps to make 4,8, or 12. I always did 12 on each exercise which would equal 24 at the end of one superset which would be hitting the endurance muscles

[David PvP]

I saw something weird this week,i've been doing doing mostly dumbelss and seem to get a superior stimulation as opposed to barbell,anyone elce noticed that?for example i always did barbell curls at the beggining of my training and afther alternate dumbells hammers ets,but when i first started with dumbells i could feel a complete superior training session and my biceps contracted in pain on each rep,felt like this was the best training i ever had in my entire life,

[ickythump]

When you move heavier weight you will grow, but heavy weight won't get the stimulation like higher rep (still in hypertrophy range, not like 30 obv) with biceps I do heavy ez bar, lighter for preacher, lighter for drag curls or incline db curls, then burn out on the reverse grip drag at my lightest weight if the day...that's gonna change when I plateau but it's working now

[David PvP]

i noticed that in the last few weeks i get a way better stimulation from db curls than barbell,weird

[David PvP]

confirrmed,even weight is bigger on dumbells,i curl 50 lb dumbell with anal form,and when i go over 100 lb barbell i dont feel the same stimulation

[David PvP]

i notice if i go by feel i ge ta perfect stimulation