Muscle Hypertrophy is the process where our muscles get physically larger through consistent and focused exercise sessions. It‘s not enough to feel a ‘burn’ during your workout. Muscle growth requires progressively adding volume to your training either with more reps, more weight, or both. Gaining muscle takes many months of progressive overload and eating at maintenance or in a slight surplus – so you have additional energy to repair and lay down new muscle tissue.
Building muscle isn’t simply about going to the gym, and it’s not simply about eating lots of protein. To build muscle/hypertrophy, you have to train hard with this goal in mind, then recover, grow stronger, and repeat. Once you’ve got a handle on this, you also have to create the proper recovery protocol for yourself when you’re not in the gym or exercising – otherwise your efforts will be stumped. This includes regular days off from strength training, quality sleep and stress reduction as much as possible.
Here’s a few more tips I like to give the nutrition clients and athletes I coach:
Eat a small amount of fast-digesting carbohydrate before your training session if you’re working out first thing in the morning. This will ensure your glycogen stores are topped up – giving you the fuel you need to push out a few extra reps. If you’ve eaten a carbohydrate-containing meal a few hours before your session, you’ll already be ready to go!
Split your protein servings across 5 meals a day (or thereabouts). Protein timing affects hypertrophy because our bodies can’t store it (like we can excess energy as fat – dammit!). Drip-feeding your protein throughout the day will ensure maximal muscle gain. Bonus: protein intake also benefits performance, recovery, lean body mass, and strength (PMID: 23241341)
Drink plenty of water! Your muscles are made primarily of water. Dehydration can prevent muscles from properly contracting, reducing muscle tone. It can also decrease your performance and output in the gym, so hydration is key.
Eat whole, nutritiously dense foods at least 80% of the time. This ensures your body is getting more vitamins and minerals in their natural form to ensure you’re recovering optimally.
Train consistently and push yourself – the only way muscles will grow is via increased stress (reps, sets, weight), time under tension (more reps to help increase the tension time) and damage (stressing the muscles with consistency and increased load over time). This is what we refer to as ‘progressive overload’ and is programmed into all of the Status8020 online coaching – personalised to you.
Understanding how and why muscle growth occurs will help you hit your goals faster and see you continually progress week to week!
A gentle reminder that muscle growth rates vary by individual, even when following the same program. This is down to genetics, hormones, recovery protocols, sleep efficiency, and more, so be patient with your journey and stay in your lane. You’re trying to improve on YOUR physiology and current state, no one else’s.