in order for a muscle to grow you need to continuously challenge them with more than they're used to as simple as this sounds most people's workouts don't accomplish this sure they'll get a good pump and sweat out of their workouts but they aren't actually doing much to Signal their muscles to grow over time to better explain this let's take a quick look at the science behind what actually makes the muscle grow so let's say we just finish a workout immediately after our muscles don't actually get stronger in fact they become temporarily weaken from the damage
that we put them through it's not until after a few days of proper recovery that they adapt to the damage we put them through and will come back bigger and stronger than they were before in order to be better prepared for the next work that we put them through however no matter how good of a pump you get or how much you sweat if that next session isn't providing your muscles more of a challenge than the previous session did then the muscle will have no reason to grow and will simply maintain its current size of
strength or in some cases even start to become smaller and weaker for consistent gains over time your workouts need to be designed such that they literally force your muscles to grow every single session today we're going to cover the five ways to do just that increasing the amount of weight lifted is a method that most people rely on to apply it it's quite straightforward let's say you can currently bench press 100 lb for8 reps next week you might try to increase the load and do 110 lb for8 reps which would create a new stimulus for
your muscles to have to adapt to and grow from now if you're a beginner then this method of progressive overload will be your bread and butter to help you make gains quickly you'll likely be able to add 5 to 10 lbs to the bar every single week especially on your main lifts like the bench press the squat and the deadlift however if you take our previous example of bench pressing 100 lb in week one and adding 10 lbs of weight every week at the end of the year theoretically you should be benching 62 20 lb
as cool as that would be neither myself nor Alex one of our record-breaking built with science coaches who can bench over twice his body weight is anywhere close to that this is where people get stuck they rely on only adding more weight as their method of challenging their muscles to grow and eventually get stuck in a plateau to break through this we have to get more creative with how we continue challenging our muscles this is where our next Point comes in handy when applied properly adding more reps is another great way to force your muscles
to grow the way this works can be Illustrated with a very simple math equation if I can bench press 100 lb for 10 reps one week I can multiply those numbers together and calculate that I've lifted 1,000 lb total across that set if next week I go to the gym and lift that same weight but for 11 reps I will have lifted 1,00 lb across that same set this means that by just adding one rep to my set I've technically lifted 100 lb more than last week which just like added more weight does would create
a new stimulus for your muscles to grow but how high in reps can you go while using the same weight well based on a 2017 meta analysis as long as you're continuing to push hard you can keep the same weight and increase all the way up to 30 reps and still get the same growth compared to adding more weight this is extremely helpful if you only have limited equipment or a nagan injury and can't increase the weight on your lifts even if you wanted to however for those who do have access to more weights what
we found to be most effective and teach in our bu with science programs is something called double progression this is a system that utilizes both reps and weight to ensure that week by week you're forcing your muscles to grow the way it works is quite simple let's say you're doing three sets of squats for 8 to 12 reps with 100 lb in week one you could do eight reps for each set next week you'd aim to do nine reps each set if that went well you continue doing that until you were able to do 12
Reps for all three sets at that point rather than continuing to increase your reps you could add 10 lbs and restart the process by going back down to eight reps however again this often only works for so long what happens when you get stuck unable to add more weight or do more reps well here's where another often overlooked form of progression can come into play the next method has to do with how many sets you perform let's say you're trying to build up your biceps adding sets can be as simple as going from three sets
of 12 one week to four sets of 12 the next week using the simple math equation we used earlier if we were curling 40 lbs in each hand then each of our biceps would be lifting 480 lbs more volume in the second week by just adding that one set it's a really simple way to add a massive amount of training volume to your program and it's something we use in our more advanced build with science programs to help bring up laging muscle groups however when using this method you need to use it sparingly based on
the literature we know doing at least Le 10 sets per muscle group per week nearly doubles the amount of gains that you would get compared to doing just five sets per muscle group per week but there comes a point of diminishing returns when you get into the 20 to 30 set zone so A good rule of thumb is to increase volume no more than 10 to 20% per week so if you're currently doing 10 sets of chest per week for example but you're stuck unable to lift more weight or do more reps then next week
you could instead still use the same weight and do the same amount of reps but just add one extra set to each exercise and continue doing so every week then once you get to the 20 to 30 set zone or you just begin to feel quite fatigued you can cycle back down to the original program that you started with now although this method does have its benefits it is quite taxi on the body and can make your workouts considerably longer the next two methods are ways you can continue forcing your muscles to grow while lifting
the same weight and doing the same number of reps and sets every single week Tempo refers to how fast or slow we lift weights if we slow down our reps we can increase the amount of time that tension is place on the muscle to stimulate more growth this is especially effective for exercises involving smaller weaker muscle groups like lateral raises where adding just a little bit of weight often disproportionately increases difficulty or body weight exercises like push-ups and pull-ups where adding weight may not even be an option however you want to avoid going too slow
as that can provide the opposite effect and start to hinder muscle growth rather than boost it based on the recommendations of Dr Brad shenfeld who ran a 2015 meta analysis analyzing the effects of tempo on muscle growth it seems that we can slow down our reps up to about 6 seconds total so for example let's say you're doing 20 lb lateral raises and for each rep you usually take about a second on the way up and a second on the way down rather than doing more weight reps or sets to stimulate growth you can instead
just slow down your reps by 1 second every week and you can apply this until you reach 3 seconds on the way up and 3 seconds all the way down at which point the rest would just get too slow and is when you'd want to apply another form of overload which could be as simple as increasing the weight up to 25 lbs or utilizing the next method often times when people think they are challenging their muscles more by adding more weight to their lifts they really just end up compromising their form in the process as
a result despite using a heavier weight than they were previously their target muscles aren't actually working any harder you need to realize that if you do the same work that you did the week before but you perform your exercises with better control less momentum and more activation of your target muscles then that is progression better form involves relying more on the target muscles and will result in growth even if all other variables remain the same although this method may not catch your eye as much as some of the others on this list many of you
watching could easily stimulate a significant amount of growth for all your muscles by simply cleaning up your form with your exercises even Advanced lifters we still spend time analyzing and tweaking our form because we know that any other method of growth will be meaningless unless your form remains intact now as for which of these five methods is best and is going to provide you with the most growth the truth is it depends it depends on your level of experience your equipment availability and if there's a certain type of plateau that you're stuck in the best
way to find out is to just experiment with them and see what works best for you but if you're looking for a step-by-step program that takes care of all the guest workk for you and ensures that week by week you're challenging your body in the right way to consistently build muscle and lose fat just head on over to buildwi science.com and take our analysis quiz to find out which of our programs is best for you and your body anyways that is it for today guys thank you so much for watching don't forget to show your
support by giving the video a like subscribe to the channel and leaving a comment down below as to what you like to see me cover next thank you so much and I'll see you next time
