At its core, muscle building is a simple and well understood process. However, understanding how to optimise this process can be very challenging given the amount of conflicting information available online, and possibly different perspectives offered by people at your gym. This short article endeavours to cut through all the noise and provide a simple guide to help you understand if your training style is beneficial for long term muscle building (hypertrophy).
What Are Muscles and How Do They Work?
Skeletal muscles are made up of motor units—each consisting of a motor neuron and the muscle fibers it activates. When your brain sends a signal through the spinal cord, motor neurons fire, causing all the fibers in a given motor unit to contract at once.
Motor units vary in size. Small units handle fine movements, like writing, while large units control powerful actions, like jumping or lifting weights. The body recruits motor units according to the size principle: smaller ones first, larger ones as force demand increases. You don’t fully activate your biceps just to sip water—but you might when curling a heavy dumbbell.
This matters because the larger motor units connect to fast-twitch fibers with the most growth potential. To build muscle, you must train hard enough to recruit them—typically by pushing sets close to failure. You don’t need to master every detail, but understanding why training near failure is essential helps you train more effectively.
How Do Muscles Grow?
A muscle’s primary job is to produce force. When you train to (or very close to) failure, your body is pushed beyond its current capacity. In response, it adapts by building stronger, larger muscles. This is hypertrophy.
Progressive overload is vital for this process. If you gradually increase weight, reps, or training difficulty over time, your body keeps adapting. But if you stick to the same routine without increasing the challenge, growth eventually stalls.
Muscle doesn’t grow during your workout—it grows during rest, particularly deep sleep, when muscle protein synthesis repairs and strengthens fibers. Without proper recovery, adaptation is blunted. Chronic fatigue, overtraining, or poor sleep can slow or even reverse progress. Rest is not optional—it’s essential.
Applying This Knowledge
To maximize hypertrophy:
● Train close to failure. This ensures full motor unit recruitment and adequate mechanical tension.
● Train each muscle 2–3 times per week. Muscle building takes place over a 48 hour window post stimulus (after working out)
● Start with 6–10 sets per muscle group per week, performing 6–10 reps per set. Adjust as needed based on progress and recovery.
● Recover properly. Sleep 8 hours per night, eat enough protein and calories, and manage stress. Poor recovery is a common progress killer.
● Progressively overload. Track your weights and reps, and aim to increase them over time. Focus on maximal force production during the lifting (concentric) phase. Slowing down involuntarily toward the end of a set is a good sign—you’re hitting those large motor units.
What to Avoid
Avoid training styles that don’t support high force production. These include:
● Intensifiers like drop sets, pre-exhaustion, and very slow eccentrics. They add fatigue without increasing effective muscle stimulus, often leading to longer recovery with little benefit.
● Very high-rep or pump-focused training. These may feel intense but often produce low mechanical tension—key for hypertrophy.
● Junk volume. Extra sets and reps that add stress but don’t drive growth can drain recovery capacity and hinder progress.
● Overreliance on isometrics or partial reps. These can be useful in specific contexts but typically underload the muscle.
● Chasing the burn, counting seconds, or obsessing over mind-muscle connection often distracts from what matters most: effort, progressive overload, and recovery.
Exercise selection and training splits matter less than consistency, hard work, and adequate rest. There’s no perfect routine—just one that lets you train hard, recover well, and stay consistent.
One Last Piece of Advice
Don’t get lost in the details. The internet is flooded with debates over rep ranges, biomechanics, moment arms, and training splits. While some of it is useful, much of it is overcomplication.
There’s no single objective “best” exercise for any muscle. The best one is:
For example, if you hate leg presses, do hack squats. If you hate hack squats, use the leg press. Pick movements that feel good, challenge you, and keep you motivated to train hard.
Muscle-Building Checklist:
● Am I training to failure (or within 1–2 reps of it)?
● Do my exercises apply significant tension to the target muscle?
● Am I resting enough between sets? (Big drop in performance = not enough rest.)
● Am I training each muscle 2–3 times a week?
● Am I giving at least 48 hours before training the same muscle again?
● Is my weekly volume 6–10 sets per muscle, 6–10 reps per set? (Adjust as needed.)
● Am I sleeping 8+ hours per night?
● Am I eating enough protein and total calories?
● Am I managing stress and fatigue effectively?
If you’re checking all these boxes, you will build muscle.
