Why gain muscle?
How much muscle will I gain?
For men:
- Year one: 20-25lb, 9-11⅓kg
- Year two: 10-12lb, 4½-5½kg
- Year three: 5-6lb, 2½kg
- All subsequent years: minimal amounts
So overall about 14-16kg above baseline
For women: Half the above.
How to gain muscle?
Do three things and you'll gain muscle:
- Eat a caloric surplus
- Eat a protein surplus
- Expose your muscles to high levels of tension (i.e. lift)
How much caloric surplus?
14-16 kcal per pound of bodyweight is your baseline
- Year one: 175 calories/dayover baseline
- Year two: 120 calories/day over baseline
- Year three: 60 calories/day over baseline
Sources: https://bodyrecomposition.com/muscle-gain/calories-for-muscle-gain
How much protein?
2.5-3.0 g per kilogram of bodyweight
Source: https://bodyrecomposition.com/nutrition/protein-requirements-growth
How much/what kind of muscle tension?
You need high tension but also the right volume. High tension means 70-85% 1RM. No need to lift more than 85% of 1RM.
doi:10.1249/00005768-197500740-00003 and doi:10.2165/00007256-200737030-00004 are the classic papers on this.
30-60 reps per session: 3 sets of 10, and sometimes two different exercises per bodypart
5×5 is fine too; things like the Madcow or Stronglifts 5×5 give about the same muscle-tension as 3×10, and muscle tension is the whole point.
Train twice per week. The research is clear on this. Three times is not better than twice.
More complicated ways of getting that muscle tension
Heavy negatives (130% of 1RM) work but volume should be very low: 14-16 seconds of tension per session
Isometrics: A study doing 10 seconds of isometrics, three times a day (30s/day), six days a week, had the best gains in bicep size
I said three workouts a week is not better than two, but there might be an exception in the first week of a mesocycle. So a mesocycle would be: train four times a week for one week, train twice a week for five weeks, rest a week, repeat.
How the hell am I supposed to take in 170g of protein per day? (84.1kg*2g protein)
Looking at the link, it sounds more like 1-2g/kg is perfectly fine for regular people as long as you are actually getting that amount.Mind you, this is truly for high-level athletes and wouldn’t really apply for the general recreational trainee or what have you. In that situation, 2.2 g/kg or the standard 1 g/lb is likely to be more than sufficient. Why not give a lower value?
Well in practice if the average person shoots for 1 g/lb they will probably fall short to begin with and end up lower than that. Give them 0.8 g/lb (1.6 g/kg) and they will end up even lower and potentially run into problems in terms of sub-optimal protein intakes.
Anecdotally I seem to recover ok as long as I'm getting over 100g/day following the workout. Everybody's different, so try playing with it a bit.
EDIT: Lol I have zero reading comprehension and did not notice the 1g figure was for lbs. Either way, maybe try shooting for half or 3/4 that first and see if you are recovering properly. You'll feel like death the next day or two after working out if you're truly not getting enough protein in your diet.
Train twice per week. The research is clear on this. Three times is not better than twice.
Do you mean train each muscle group two times per week? Or do you mean train at all two times per week? I'm assuming the former but would love confirmation. Also could you cite a paper for that one? I'd love to learn more
doi: 10.2165/00007256-200737030-00004
Very interesting paper in general, worth reading even if you don't read a lot of scientific papers.
It’s per lift. Stronger by Science has a good break down on frequency here: https://www.strongerbyscience.com/more-is-more/
for all my transfeminine baddies out there, I'm gradually making modifications on Jeff Nippard's Fundamentals of Hypertrophy program to cater to a more femme body shape (extra leg work, double extra glute work, avoiding obliques to keep the waist narrow, I personally like my thicc shoulders but that part can be removed from arms). If anyone's interested I can make a post about it!
e: there is interest and it shall be done, I'm gonna be passenger princessing for a couple hours today and I'll type it up 🍑
ee: https://hexbear.net/post/281715
Last year I switched to lifting twice/week, and it's true I haven't really noticed a difference over lifting three times per week. Now I just try to throw some running in as a third workout if I have the time.
I noticed you left out training to failure. Do you know of any literature on that? I felt like dropsets at the very end of a set helped me a lot, anecdotally
It's about muscle tension.
EMG showed (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27935085) that training to failure with a light (i.e. 70%) weight (the subjects averaged 18 reps) produced the same muscle tension as 8 reps with a heavy (90%) weight.
Training to failure isn't necessary; it's a way of compensating for using too-light weights.
If you're taking about truly training to failure, and not just stopping when it feels difficult, it depends on your recovery capacity. It's much harder to recover from a session when you did 3 sets to complete failure, than one where you left one or two reps in reserve per set. Yes the stimulus may be greater, but do will be the fatigue. And it's not necessary when starting out, because beginners van achieve adequate gains training very far away from failure.
Think of training as a triangle with volume, intensity and frequency as each corner. If you hard on one (so training to failure = going all in on intensity), you'll have to compromise on the other two to ensure that you recover enough before the next workout (so less volume and frequency in this case).
If you want more information on failure training and training beyond failure, you can look up high intensity workouts (HIT) and their advocates. Like Mike Mentzer. However, it can feel a bit culty and weird to go down that rabbit hole.
I'm not sure if this works but I do dropsets after the last exercise in that muscle group that I train so I don't have to compromise on the other two
So for push day, I'll dropset chest flies after I do all my benching, and I'll dropset my very last tricep exercise
As long as you can recover adequately, find it enjoyable, and are getting results, just stick to it. Dropsets are a great thing to use to get more stimulus in.
1 rep max! So, the absolute most you could lift even one single time. It's usually not done for people outside of those into high scores, like competition strongmen. It's not super useful for functional strength and it's definitely not useful for hypertrophy.
