How to “Hack” Muscle Growth in 2024 (NEW RESEARCH)

Jeremy Ethier has consolidated the work of 7 of the world’s smartest muscle building scientists.

In his incredibly insightful video below, he breaks down the sum total of this advice into 7 individual sections covering the following aspects of training:

1. Exercises
2. Frequency and Volume
3. Progressive Overload
4. Training to Failure
5. Lengthened Partials
6. Nutrition (Calories)
7. Nutrition (Protein)

How to “Hack” Muscle Growth in 2024 (NEW RESEARCH)

Jeremy explains, “So, when it comes to how to build muscle, the first piece of the puzzle is exercise selection. Dr. Mike Israetel provided his insight. He says the number of exercises to build muscle you should have in your plan for muscle growth is something like 2 to 4 per muscle. He also emphasizes that you shouldn’t change exercises every week. Instead, you should only switch things up if your exercise is hurting your joints, it’s boring you, et cetera, and there are other good candidates around.”

Source: Photo Courtesy of CrossFit Inc

“Dr. Brad Schoenfeld then came in to explain volume and frequency. On the number of sets needed to optimize hypertrophy: it’s somewhere in the range of 10-20 sets per muscle group weekly. However, there may be a benefit to specialization cycles where high volumes can be beneficial for a given muscle group. Beginners should not be focusing on volume for hypertrophy. The first several months should just be focused on learning your movement patterns and very basic type routines. There does seem to be a modest hypertrophy benefit in training a muscle more than once a week when you exceed 8 to 10 sets per muscle or more per week. Brad recommends an upper lower split.”

“As for how heavy you should lift and the rep range you should use to build muscle, Daniel Plotkin says that for most people, between 5 and 15 reps, which is usually a moderate load. Then, during each set, apply a progressive overload technique called double progression. This is where you focus on increasing your reps before adding more weight. For example, if you can do 8 reps with a certain amount of weight, aim to do more reps with that same weight the following week. Keep going until you get to 12 reps per set, which is when you should you consider adding a small amount of weight, continuing the process.”

“And on whether training to failure is truly the best way to gain muscle, Josh says although training to failure may lead to more growth when you look at just 1 set in isolation, it also creates more fatigue. That’s why he recommends training 2 to 3 reps in reserve for all your sets except for the last set, where you’d just take it all the way to failure.”

“Dr. Milo Wolf then shares a hypertrophy hack: lengthened partials, which seem to produce more, or at the very least, the same amount of hypertrophy than a full range of motion. He recommends instead of doing a full range of motion on a given exercise, try using about 50% or about half reps in that lengthened position.”

Source: Photo courtesy of CrossFit Inc.

“Now, it’s time to learn more about the other half of the how to build muscle equation, nutrition. Dr. Eric Helms explains calorie intake. Basically, you want to scale your calorie surplus and your rate of weight gain to your experience level. So if you’re a beginner, gaining 2% of your body weight per month, which would roughly track with that 300 to 500 calorie surplus is a good idea. And then if you’re an intermediate, probably something closer to 1% of your body weight per month is a decent target. That’s probably gonna be between the 200 to 300 calorie surplus.And then if you are advanced, we’re probably talking a 100 to 200 calorie surplus at most and gaining like 0.5 to 1% of their body weight per month.”

“Finally, Alan Aragon explains protein intake. Here’s what he says: of first importance, get total daily protein straight, which is 0.7 to 1.0 g/lb bodyweight, that’s the cake. For the icing on the cake, spread it out relatively evenly over a minimum of 3 protein doses over the course of the day. As for the best protein sources, Alan recommends getting a mix of protein sources throughout the day.”

Timestamps

0:00 – 7 Experts

0:55 – Best Exercises Per Muscle

6:04 – Volume/Frequency

8:33 – Progressive Overload

10:40 – Training to Failure

13:33 – Lengthened Partials

16:06 – Nutrition (CALORIES)

18:56 – Nutrition (PROTEIN)

22:19 – Full Routine

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