Hypertrophy and Muscle Growth

So what is the best way to achieve hypertrophy? The reality is that there is not a
single kind of hypertrophy, and you must do different types of training to target the
two broad types of hypertrophy. What are the two types? Hypertrophy can be
broken down into two broad types:
Myofibril hypertrophy.
Myofibrils are essentially bundles of myofilaments (The contractile parts of a
muscle, the parts that pull). They are found in each skeletal muscle fiber.
Each muscle cell contains many myofibrils. Myofibril hypertrophy occurs due to an
overload stimulus (lifting more than your body is used to) that applies trauma to the
individual muscle fibers. Your body treats this as an injury and as such
overcompensates during the recovery process by increasing the volume and density
of the myofibrils so that the injury does not occur again.
This is one of the reasons why you must maintain overload to continue making
gains.
Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy.
The sarcoplasm is the fluid and energy sources that surround the myofibrils in the
muscle. It includes things such as ATP, glycogen, creatine phosphate and water.
Increase in size of blood vessels that provide blood to the muscles can also be
included in sarcoplasmic hypertrophy and is commonly referred to as capillirisation.
This occurs much in the same way as myofibril hypertrophy, through your body
overcompensating during the recovery phase after your energy sources have been
depleted during a workout. It therefore increases energy stores such as ATP and
glycogen to prevent depletion during training.Muscle Hypertrophy
Ok, so I know the two types. What are the best ways to achieve both? Before I go
on I want to stress that you:
Choose the weight for your reps NOT the reps for your weight.
Progressive resistance exercise or progressive overload refers to the practice of
continually increasing the stress placed on the muscle as it becomes capable of
producing greater force or has more endurance. (Fleck S. J. and Kraemer W.J.,1997).
This means that you MUST use weights and rep ranges that you struggle with.
You should choose a weight that you can only just complete the desired reps for. Do
not choose a weight and get nearly the reps that are required, or one that is too
light that you could complete many more reps. So for a 12 rep exercise, choose a
weight that you can only just complete those 12 reps.

Myofibril hypertrophy training:

Strength training with 80%+ of your 1RM and reps in the 3-8 range with 2-4 minutes
rest produce the largest changes in myofibrillar volume and density. Therefore if you
want to achieve myofibril hypertrophy you must lift heavy. The heavier the weights
you lift the more muscle fibers are recruited and in turn damaged. However it is
recommended to keep the reps between 3-5 as any lower and it is mainly neuromuscular adaptations that improve the athletes strength rather than through
myofibril hypertrophy (Zatsiorsky, 1995).
In fact low reps are essential for achieving maximal growth - Charles
Poliquin 1997.
Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy training:
Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is achieved through what is known as fatigue training.
Fatigue training is training at an intensity ~75% of your 1RM with reps in the range
of 10-15 and short rest periods 45-90 seconds. It is referred to as fatigue training as
it rapidly and directly uses up a lot of the stored energy in your muscle cells and
fatigues your muscles.
When choosing the amount of sets for your workouts you must take into account
the time under tension. There is a minimum amount of time under tension required
for muscle hypertrophy to occur. Due to this it is generally required to complete
more total sets for your strength training routine than your higher rep fatigue
training routine.
In fatigue training you want to time under tension to be greater than the immediate
energy available. The most immediate energy sources for short term anaerobic
exercise is your ATP and creatine phosphate stores. These however are very short
term and as such will be depleted in 7-10 seconds. After this your body will break
down glycogen for energy, which will produce lactic acid (the burn). Therefore you
must maintain a time under tension of over 10 seconds per set in fatigue training.
The inclusion of slower reps, or methods such as same muscle supersets are a great
way to achieve this.

Why cant I train both in a single rep range?

There is a spectrum through which myofibril and sarcoplasmic hypertrophy occur:
1-5 Reps - Lead to a maximum increase in relative strength and myofibril
recruitment.
6-8 Reps - Produce the best medium between myofibril and sarcoplasmic
hypertrophy.
9-12 Reps - Increase sarcoplasmic hypertrophy at the maximum rate.
>15 Reps - You move into the range of muscular endurance where hypertrophy
gains slow.
Myofibril damage will not just cease to happen at >12 reps, but it will be to a lesser
degree and with less muscle fiber recruited than at lower reps.
Put it this way, why would you want to train at a rep range in which you are not
getting maximum gains in either sarcoplasmic or myofibril hypertrophy? When you
can train both maximally without deceasing gains in the other. I will explain how this
can be achieved further down.
Ok so myofibril hypertrophy is best achieved through strength training and
sarcoplasmic hypertrophy through fatigue training. What is the best way to achieve
both?
Bodybuilder performing lat pulldowns for hypertrophy.
Im sure you are aware of the dominance of the Eastern Bloc countries during the
50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. This can attributed to many things, notably the use of
periodization.

Periodization in the West was very basic and often unused in many cases until the
release of information from the Eastern bloc coaches. Periodization is the method of
training specific goals in a cycle. Periodization can be broken down into 3 main
categories:
Microcycle: Is very short term, usually around a week.
Mesocycle: Longer term cycles usually several weeks.
Macrocycle: Long term cycles for several months, even years.
Now conventionally people use mesocycles for their training, they do a set program
for 8-12 weeks, say a strength program. They then swap and do for example a
cutting program for another 8-12 weeks. While this type of training can produce
results in a single area, it is very linear and as such you will regress in certain areas.
It is also difficult to maintain overload on a program done for many weeks/months.
This is where the Eastern Bloc training comes in. Many Eastern Bloc coaches used
very short term microcycles for their training, they would train towards many
different goals in a few weeks. For example:
Week 1: Relative strength training.
Week 2: Power and speed development.
These can be repeated for many months with only slight changes and overload can
be achieved more easily as the body finds it more difficult to adapt to rapid changes
in training style.
So to achieve maximal hypertrophy I recommend you use 2-3 week long
microcycles e.g.
Week 1: Strength training, 4 day split.
Week 2: Fatigue training, 5 day split.
Week 3: Recovery, 2 day full body split.
It is also possible to use even shorter intra-workout cycles for example starting a
routine with an upper body strength exercise with reps in the range of 2-6 for 5-6
sets then moving on to higher rep (8-15), lower rest training for another 3-4
exercises.
A good example of a routine like this is Westside for Skinny Bastards which trains
both low rep max effort training alongside higher rep fatigue training. It is important
to note that if you do decide to undertake or create such a program that you make
sure you perform the heavier max effort lifts first. This is due to the advantage in
exciting your nervous system before continuing for more exercises. To put it another

way your nervous system is warmed up and working to maximum efficiency after
completing some heavy sets.
A study comparing the effects of linear vs. periodization changes in college athletes
showed that the linear trained athletes strength increased 14.15% over 12 weeks
compared to 23.53% for the athletes using periodized training programs. (Prestes J,
Frollini AB, 2009)