Categories: Bodybuilding

What Is Muscle Hypertrophy

What is muscle hypertrophy

Muscle hypertrophy is a very vehiculated term in the bodybuilding world. You will hear it every time everyone is talking about muscle building. Despite it sounds a bit scientific, dont worry, it really means a pretty simple process which you have to be aware of for getting bigger. As you guessed, today we gonna talk about muscle hypertrophy: what it means, how it works and everything else you have to know about it.

A very simple definition for hypertrophy is an increase of muscle mass size. So, every time you think about increasing muscle mass, you definitely have to deal with muscle hypertrophy. There are many reasons for wanting to change the way you look. But most of people, both women and men, do it for aesthetic reason, looking to get a very nice build body with no fat on it. It help men to get a more defined masculine look, while women add some quality weight as muscles.

Muscle hypertrophy helps to get larger muscles, but it doesn’t support you in increasing body strength as well. It occurs during the recovery time, when your body begin to heal broken muscle cells, creating more others.  That’s why you have not the expect an increase of body strength indicators, if you focus all your attention on triggering a more powerful hypertrophy level.

Muscle size and body strength not always go hand in hand. You can be actual quite big in size, but your strength is much lower than you suppose. The best example is bodybuilders and weightlifters. The last ones can have less muscle mass, while are very strong. Instead, bodybuilders have great amounts of muscle mass, are weaker than weightlifters.

That’s is why if very important to decide what is more important for you: muscle size or body strength. If you answer is getting bigger, than the further information shared here is really what you need.

Over the time it was proved that weight lifting exercises are the best for causing maximal muscle cells breaks. That’s why in the regard of best exercises for reaching a higher level of hypertrophy are recommended lifting exercises. But for putting bigger stress on your muscles, you have to pay attention on other training parameters such as exercises velocity, training intensity and volume or the type of used weights.

First of all, choose the best training split that fit your level. Beginners are advised to focus on  2-3 training session weekly based on compounds exercises for full group of muscles (squats, deadlifts, bench presses, pull ups, push ups and others). All  these exercises have to be done with weights. More experienced bodybuilders can train more oftenly, using a training routine that perfectly fit their goals.

Go with more reps if you want add more lean muscle mass. Generally a rep range between 8-12 is best to get maximal hypertrophy. A less number, about 6-8 reps, would help you to increase both muscle mass and body strength. Also, increase loads progressively. This will help you to prevent any injury and muscle stagnation.  Reaching a plateau can be a quite downcast, thereby on a regular schedule increase weight you work with some pounds.

Exercise velocity play a big importance to, directly affecting your results. Do exercises on high speed,  to broke down more muscle cells. If you do them on a slower tempo, than you get increased both muscle mass and strength.

For reaching maximal hypertrophy you have to target right muscle fiber. Our body has two types of muscle fiber directly responsible for muscle growth. “Fast twitch” fibers are involved in work during heavy exercises. On the other hand, “slow twitch” fibers are used during lighter exercises. Between those two types of fibers, the fast twitch are the ones who grow larger. That’s why if your goal is muscle increase, you have to focus all your attention on high intensity workout routine, with big accent on weight lifting.

Getting a maximal hypertrophy is directly related to your diet. If you are serious about building muscle, than you most probably know that there is no muscle gains without a proper nutrition plan. First of all, it is about eating more protein than usually you do.  For this eat more meat, at least 2 gr for each body weight pound. Also, including some protein shakes would be very beneficial too. Generally, you have to consider adding to your main diet a lot of supplements so needed for a quick and qualitative muscle growth. You need to add lean muscle mass, but not fat. That’s why you have to feed your body with high quality products, full of vitamins, minerals so necessary for your body.

If you feel that supplements are not enough for you, than you can choose to use anabolic steroids with great bulking effect. Before planning a steroid cycle, do your homework and read all stuff related to steroids use. You do not have to go to search on google for this, since on this blog you will find detailed information about what are steroids, their use, stacks, cycles and everything else a potential steroid user should know.

So, hypertrophy is the process of building muscle mass. It occurs when body heals muscle cells broken during working out, and replace them with other new more cells. Thus muscles get larger. Hypertrophy is not responsible for increasing body strength indicators too. By the way it functions, impressive muscle gains can be achieved, while strength gains can be additional, but not a rule.

Maximum muscle hypertrophy is achieved when are worked fast twitch muscle fibers. They are involved in work during weight lifting  exercises, and increase size significantly. That’s why muscle growth training need to have a higher intensity, including compound exercises performed with a big number of reps for each set. The recommended reps range should be about 8-12. Progressively increase of loads is another training parametre that will help you to continuously build muscle mass, avoid such unwanted situations like injuries or plateaus.

Remember that diet is as important as training, and you have to pay the same attention to it too. Overwise, all your efforts can be too less to gain muscle mass. Protein rich diet, with a lot of other needed supplements is just in short described regimen to follow. Considering steroids in another way to get big muscles in effective time frame.

 

F Kyle

The "GYMRAT" of this blog, Pro-blogger and Fitness Instructor since 2008

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