The Beast Gear Guide to Hypertrophy

Looking to lift more and turbocharge your muscles? No doubt you’ve heard some pretty big dudes talking about their hypertrophy programs. 

But what is  hypertrophy and how can it help you beast your muscle goals? In this article, Beast Gear gives you the lowdown.

Hypertrophy In a Nutshell 

To make this happen, there needs to be more contractile proteins in your muscle fibres.

To make that  happen, you have to put yourself on the right training program. In other words, a hypertrophy training program.

Your Rep Ranges

The science behind hypertrophy is both simple and awesome. The human body can  be made bigger and stronger than it currently is, and the way to do this is by triggering a physiological need. The way to trigger said need is by putting repeated stress on your tissues, which says to your tissues “we need to get bigger, dude, in order to accommodate these bigger loads.” 

 

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When it comes to your hypertrophy training program, you should aim to do sets of 6 - 25 reps over a period of time, using consistently bigger and bigger weights. 

How Much You Should Lift 

Typically, weights are 35% of your 1RM (at least). If they aren’t, you’ll struggle to achieve any degree of muscle growth. And if you’re not noticing any muscle growth at all, you just need to step things up a bit. 

Your Training Volume 

I can’t speak for you on this one, as your training volume comes down to things like your previous training history, your current lifestyle, your genetics and - perhaps most importantly - your physiology.

However, you should bear these principles in mind: 

Maintenance Volume 

This pertains to the amount of volume needed to maintain your gains. 

Minimum Effective Volume 

This pertains to the least amount of volume needed to make your gains.

Maximum Adaptive Volume 

This pertains to the range of volume where you make your best gains. As you adapt to different weights, this metric will change. 

Maximum Recoverable Volume 

If you go above this level, your body isn’t growing and recovering properly in response to the program. You thus need to make changes or stunt your own growth. 

Best Hypertrophy Training Cycles 

Hypertrophy training programs always work better in cycles. There are 3 different cycles:

Macrocycle 

If you want to dedicated 20 weeks to just hypertrophy, it’s known as a macrocycle. A macrocycle is any period of time dedicated solely to hypertrophy.

Mesocycles 

These are blocks of time where you start at the lower end of your adaptive volume and move up to the upper end.

Then, you de-load and start the next mesocycle. 

Microcycles

A microcycle describes your training program for each week. For example, you might have 7 microcycle’s for each mesocycle, and 19 microcycle’s in the overall macrocycle. 

Conclusion 

To get the most out of hypertrophy training programs so that you turbocharge your muscles, you just need to begin by determining your 1 rep max for a muscle, which is the max weight you should lifting for 1 rep. 

 

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Using this number, you can then determine the progression of weight. And as your strength increases, your 1RM will change, too. So tweak your weight accordingly as you move through each workout.