Building Muscle 101: Part One- What is Hypertrophy

Whether you think it’s a painfully cliché sentiment or its your golden ticket to a burger laiden dirty bulk it is somewhat an accurate sentiment that summer bodies are built in winter.

Sure the idea of busting your bollocks in the cold might be as appealing as swimming with an open mouth through Lake Burley Griffin any time of year but if you want to be looking top notch in summer you’ve got to put in the work through the cold.

Over this and the next two articles we are going to dive into all things muscle building, or as it’s proper term “hypertrophy”.

Let’s first get our head around the basic’s of hypertrophy. For hypertrophy to occur we need at least one of the follow mechanisms:

·      Mechanical tension

·      Muscle damage

·      Metabolic stress

These three mechanisms are all driven by our training sessions. What do each mean and how are they a mechanism for hypertrophy? Are they all equally effective? What ideas to training facilitate each?

1.    Mechanical Tension

Like the very obvious flash car under the thin cover, it is faiiiiiirly obvious what this one implies. It is the tension a muscle, or group of muscles is under throughout the exercise with tension increasing with greater loads or greater range of movement.

Myofibrillar hypertrophy which lends itself to higher number of sets and lower reps (3-5 ish/set) usually incorporate heavier weights and drive huge amounts of mechanical tension throughout targeted areas.

Remembering our S.A.I.D principle (specific adaptations to imposed demands) high amounts of mechanical tension leads to the body creating denser, harder looking muscle in an effort to withstand the demands of heavier weights. Stronger neural drive and denser tissue, clearly demonstrated when you look at the lighter weightlifters such as the Chinese athlete Lu Xiaojun who although isn’t overly big like traditional body builders, still looks like a beast.

2.    Muscle Damage

This particular training mechanism is one that most people who have spent a little time in the gym can relate to. Muscle damage is that feeling you get after your first couple of workouts or at a change in program where you feel sore the next day. Heard someone say they have DOMS before? Rather than them harbouring multiple Dominic’s DOMS refers to delayed onset muscle soreness.

Although a lot of people associate soreness the day after a workout as a good thing, it isn’t always great. Although it is one of the three main mechanisms of hypertrophy it is potentially the least desirable of the three as for most of us, aching muscles the day after our workouts may limit our ability to move, or even train again the next day.

Balancing the workload so that there is some muscle damage without it hampering your day to day activities or your next workout is no easy feat but becomes easier to manage as you gain experience with training and better understand how your body recovers from training. Recovery as a whole is a critical component to building muscle and this series will shed a little extra light on how to optimise recovery further down the line.

As far as training variables go, rather than a rep range shining through as the major cause of muscle damage we are looking at loading parameters, in particular the eccentric portion of a lift.

As a word of warning, if you are brand new to the gym and planning on trying negatives or really, reeeeeeally slow eccentrics then prepare to be extremely sore. The eccentric portion of a repetition is the lowering phase, contracting as the muscle lengthens- think starting a squat from the top position then lowering down to your lowest point would be the eccentric.

For intermediate trainee’s and beyond prioritising the eccentric portion is a great way to build strength (you’re stronger lowering) and create controlled amounts of muscle damage provided you choose an appropriate dosage. 

3.    Metabolic Stress

Finally, metabolic stress. Have you ever performed high sets, high reps, or listened to a dude, almost any dude, literally ANY dude who’s started training talk about the pump?

As a dude, I can say this- but when you see a fella hoisting a bit of tin and then jump up flexing in the mirror, our body as a result of metabolic stress has blood move and essentially pool around muscle tissue and the sarcoplasm of the cell, swells. Cell swelling is what creates “the pump” and it makes muscles look bigger, fuller which was often thought of as a temporary thing where the lifter looks a little extra jacked (leading to us dudes having a few extra peek-a-boo’s in the mirror), now however research is starting to back up that there are in fact hypertrophy gains to be had through hormonal responses to the build up of metabolites.

From a practical sense, think giant sets (multiple exercises in one set targeting a particular muscle group), drop sets etc that have large amounts of reps with light(ish) to moderate reps.

Perhaps one of the funniest slides from one of the great body building movies, maybe more documentary “Pumping Iron” is this Arnold Schwarzenegger scene which I understand sounds like absolute woo woo nonsense- but, it’s a laugh none the less.

Have a think about any muscle building program you’ve done in the past and chances are you can find evidence of at least one of these principles in the program- be it heavy weight, sore as hell the following day or the glorious pump during training.

If you’ve not felt any of the three before and aren’t getting the hypertrophy results you’re after then maybe have a think, or a chat with someone about where you can squeeze one of these principles into your training.

Next week we are going to look at the key parameters around building muscle tissue and let me tell you- there are a LOT.

Got any questions? Sling them into the box below and lets talk a bit of muscle.