How To Train For Pure Muscle Growth

in this video I'm going to explain how to train for Pure muscle growth and I'm going to lay out five crucial bodybuilding principles that must be followed to maximize your muscular development this video isn't about how to get stronger it isn't about how to get both bigger and stronger this video is about maximizing pure muscle gain chapter one tension is King okay so the first non-negotiable principle is that tension is King at this point tension is universally recognized as the primary factor driving muscle growth tension is the force that our muscles experience when they stretch

and contract under load if you think of each muscle fiber as a rope in a tug of war that stretching and pulling on the rope is tension that tension then causes a biochemical signaling Cascade that ultimately tells the muscle it needs to grow bigger so how do we maximize tension on a muscle well answering that question leads us into the four remaining principles chapter 2 use bodybuilding technique to ensure maximum tension we need to perform exercises using a specific type of technique that I'm calling bodybuilding technique this technique is different from powerlifting technique and it's

different from how most people lift I was at an LA Fitness Gym the other day and I noticed just how few people actually use bodybuilding technique almost nobody was taking all the boxes the first box is lifting tempo for bodybuilding we generally want a controlled 2 to 4 second negative if you're used to just letting the weight free fall this will feel quite slow at first but this is important because research shows that the lower phase or the Ecentric is very likely more important for muscle growth in the positive phase or concentric yet for whatever

reason most people lift as if the opposite were true most people just try to get the weight up and then forget about lowering it back down especially as they get tired toward the end of a set but this is a mistake because the Reps toward the end of a set are the most hypertrophic and the negative is the most important part of each rep so you really want to control and resist the negative especially on those last few reps new res search also indicates that for muscle hypertrophy slower Ecentric movements should be paired with faster

concentric movements this means that while you want to go nice and slow on the negative you should be more forceful and explosive on the positive so if I'm doing a hack squat I'm thinking control control control on the way down and then speed as I explode on the way up on lateral raises I'm resisting the weight on the way down and then driving the dumbbells up and out forcefully on the positive the same tempo should apply to most exercises in your routine next bodybuilding technique means using a proper range of motion usually this means using

a full range of motion so you get to at least parallel on squat type exercises and ideally a bit below parallel you bring the dumbbells all the way down on presses until you feel a nice deep stretch in your pecs and on pull-ups you go all the way up and all the way down however there is some important Nuance here because recently a number of Studies have shown that full range of motion isn't always better for muscle growth partial reps are sometimes more effective but only when they're done in the stretched aspect of the lift

in other words the stretch stretched part is more hypertrophic than the squeezed part so the bottom half of a cable curl is more important than the top half of a cable curl the bottom half of a squat is more important than the top half of a squat so you may not necessarily always need to use a full range of motion but you do need to get the muscle sufficiently stretched while lifting to maximize hypertrophy so if you're not feeling a deep stretch at the bottom of the range of motion you should try to find that

stretch by going a bit deeper if going deeper causes you pain or serious discomfort you can work on any flexibility or Mobility deficit or you can find a different exercise that allows you to reach that deep stretch because it really is that important another thing I've been noticing a lot at the gym is that most people do quite a lot of cheating on their form probably too much cheating to maximize muscle growth that's because you can move the weight without actually applying much tension to the Target muscle for example if I curl the weight up

while leaning back and forth I'm shifting tension away from the biceps and onto the lower back so we want to ensure that the target muscle is receiving most of the tension which means keeping momentum under control chapter three effort you need to push sets hard and unfortunately research consistently shows that most people simply don't push their sets hard enough to maximize muscle growth it's very common to see people hitting the gym year after a year but making no noticeable progress in most cases this isn't because they' maxed out their natural potential instead it's usually because

they simply aren't pushing their sets close enough to failure to stimulate new hypertrophy so how hard is hard enough and how important is going to failure well since I published my last video on this topic there's been a bombshell of a new meta analysis that is the science-based lifting Community buzzing and I need to update a few things first I want to quickly announce that I just launched my new pure bodybuilding program for pre-order over on Jeff ner.me example here's a sneak peek at week one day one of the full body version of the program

we start with three sets of cross body lat pull rounds which offer an insane stretch on the lats then we do low incline Smith machine press for the pecs Which is less demanding than a freee barbell press then it's on to machine hip adductions to get the legs nice and warmed up for leg press again another low impact exercise that we can push harder without generating tons of fatigue and then we finish with some face PS and cable crunches so by prioritizing exercises that are less costly recoverywise we're able to push them much closer to

failure without feeling completely wrecked anyway you can pre-order the full 10we plan at 30% off for the pre-sale and I'll put a link to that in the description box down below so this is the new meta analysis which found that as you get closer and closer to failure the more muscle growth you tend to see and this is their bombshell figure that you've probably seen floating around online here on the x-axis we have reps in reserve so this point here at zero would be failure where you couldn't do another rep if you tried this point

would be two rep shy of failure this would be 10 rep shy of failure all the way to down to 22 rep shy of failure which would basically just be the easiest set imaginable and then here on the y- axis is muscle growth and as you can see from the trend line as you get closer and closer to failure you see more and more muscle growth in fact as you go from two reps in the tank to zero reps in the tank muscle growth really spikes up so naturally a lot of people who endorse high-intensity

to failure training have been using this study to make their case that if you want to maximize muscle growth you need to push sets all the way to failure and I do think they have a pretty good case for that training approach with this step however what I haven't seen them showing is this other brand new meta analysis from 2022 which pulled 15 studies based on slightly different inclusion criteria and came to a different conclusion quote there is no evidence to support that resistance training performed to momentary muscular failure is superior to non-failure resistance training

for muscle hypertrophy so what's going on here well it seems that depending on which specific studies you include and how you run the statistics you can either come away from this body of science thinking that going all the way to failure really really is a lot better for muscle growth or that going all the way to failure doesn't actually offer a meaningful benefit over stopping a few reps shy the evidence is conflicting so what should we do practically speaking well this is my takeaway do two to three sets on most exercises and take the last

set all the way to failure for the first one or two sets leave one or two reps in the tank if you were to go to failure on all sets you'd most likely be very fatigued by the last set which means you'd get less reps and hit less volume as a result we know from other research that volume is also important for muscle growth up to a point now rather than do a full deep dive on training volume I'll just put a text summary up here on screen that you guys can pause and read for

more detail on that so leave a few reps in the tank for the earlier sets and send it to Hell on the last set I also pretty much always leave a rep or two in the tank on heavy free weight compound exercises like squats bench presses and deadlifts even on the last set simply because going to failure is so disproportionately fatiguing that it's not worth the risk on these movements but that's also part of the reason why those exercises aren't emphasized in my pure bodybuilding program chapter four give your muscles a reason to grow to

build bigger muscles we need to give them a good reason to grow if we keep doing the exact same thing week after week and month after month our muscle growth will fairly quickly Plateau so to keep things progressing you need to apply the progressive overload principle where you aim to increase some training variable from week to week now there are a few main ways to apply Progressive overload specifically for bodybuilding first you can add reps at the same amount of weight for example on bicep curls you could do three sets of 10 in week 1

three sets of 11 in week two three sets of 12 in week three and then in week four you could either go for 13 reps or you could add some weight and return back to 10 reps and then start adding reps again this type of progression is usually better for moderate to high rep zones you can also add weight at a fixed rep count for example on hack squats you could do three sets of six reps with three plates per side in week one and then add 10 lounds to each side each week until eventually

you build up to four plates per side for the same three sets of six reps this type of progression is usually better for lower to moderate rep zones eventually you'll have a week where you're not able to add weight or reps and in this case you should focus on improving some aspect of your Technique you can try to control the negative better use less momentum on the positive or improve your range of motion I still count this as Progressive overload because it increases tension on the target muscle as a final option you can try to

improve your mind muscle Connection by really focusing on feeling the target muscle working better research has shown that the Mind muscle connection can increase hypertrophy in some cases and while may not be as effective as adding weight or reps or improving technique it's still worth keeping in mind especially on isolation exercises where traditional overloading becomes impractical at a certain point of strength development chapter five choose high tension exercises because tension is King we need to make sure that we're choosing exercises that place high levels of tension on the target muscles and this is where I

may lose some of you so I want to reiterate that this advice is directed at pure hypertrophy training not strength training or hybrid training and so while it is true that you can build a great physique by only using barbell exercises like the squat bench press and deadlift especially if you throwing in a pullup in a freee row this approach is probably too basic to maximize muscle growth that's for two reasons for one there will be smaller muscles that go under stimulated if this is literally all you do muscles like the biceps side delts hamstrings

and calves won't be getting enough love and secondly some of these exercises don't have the best stimulus to fatigue ratio this is a term coined by Dr Mike isrel and it essentially means exactly what it sounds like the stimulus part mainly refers to how much tension the exercise delivers to the Target muscle and the fatigue part refers to how fatiguing the exercise is or how hard it is to recover from so for example the deadlift offers a high stimulus because it places a lot of tension on the glutes and the spinal Erectors which is great

but it also carries a very high fatigue demand it's really hard to recover from which isn't as great from a bodybuilding perspective so for Pure hypertrophy we want to at least air toward exercises that have have a high stimulus to fatigue ratio now this doesn't mean that any exercise that causes fatigue is bad fatigue is an inevitable and necessary part of training but generally speaking if we can pick an exercise that offers just as high or higher of a stimulus for Less fatigue that's going to be a good pick and machine and cable based exercises

are some of the best options for this they provide massive tension for Less fatigue than free weights and also tend to be safer to take to failure research also shows that contrary to popular belief machines are at least as effective as free weights in stimulating hypertrophy and some evidence suggests that they may be superior in some cases this shouldn't be super surprising because machines and cables tend to have fantastic resistance profiles where you get this smooth even tension throughout the range of motion for example with the standard free weight dumbbell curl your biceps reach their

highest level of tension when the elbow is at 90° and experience virtually zero tension when the bicep is fully stretched at the bottom by contrast the face away basan cable curl offers much more continuous tension on the biceps through about the range of motion including in that important stretch position at the bottom now I don't want to overstate the superiority of machines and cables free weights have some advantages too they're more accessible they tend to have better strength carryover and they may activate smaller stabilizers better and I'm still a fan of the barbell I love

the squat bench and deadlift and I think that strength can fit neatly into a hypertrophy plan if programmed correctly but if we're designing a program purely dedicated to muscle growth that's a recovery wrinkle we don't need to worry about plus we already know that having some exercise variety and Novelty is good good for muscle growth and doing the same exercises month after month and year after year can get stale there are a few other things that can impact muscle growth but are relatively less important your training split is essentially just a way of organizing your

workouts throughout the week and as long as it fits your schedule allows you to push your sets hard do enough volume and recover between workouts it'll work just fine full body routines upper lower splits push P leg splits and even modified body part splits are all effective options also rest periods seem to matter somewhat for muscle growth resting at least 1 minute between sets is generally better than resting for less than 1 minute so be careful not to rush through your workout as it can limit your recovery between sets and then there are specialized hypertrophy

techniques like long length partials myor reps and drop sets which can all be helpful for driving continued progress beyond the beginner stage I'm going to cover at least five or six of these techniques in an upcoming miniseries so make sure you're subscribed and have a lookout for that within the next month and again if you're looking for a program to Kickstart some new growth I'd recommend checking out my pure bodybuilding program over on Jeff ner.me 30% off you'll also get the hypertrophy handbook sent to you right away which covers everything you need to know about

training for muscle growth and you'll get the pure bodybuilding nutrition booklet right away so you can get your diet on track as well you'll also get all three versions of the pure bodybuilding program when you pre-order so you'll get the push pull legs full body and upper lower versions of the program after the pre-order week is over you'll just select which one version of the program you want unless you want to buy all three separately each version of the program also includes a weak points and arm day so you can prioritize whatever your individual weak

point is and I included the dedicated arm workor because it's a really fun workout it's a great pump and arms are super important for bodybuilding this is definitely not like any of my other programs and I filmed over 200 private exercise demos specifically for this program that each come with specific coaching cues and tutorials from me there's a lot of new exercises in here that I think you guys are really going to love so you can click the link over here next to my head if you want to check that out and as always thank

you guys so much for watching I really appreciate it don't forget to leave me a thumbs up if you enjoyed the video subscribe if you haven't already and I'll see see you guys all here in the next one