Hypertrophy Specific Training (HST)

Looking to gain muscle? Tried copying everyone else but finding progress slow?
Read on..

Popular training styles

In the past and in fact present majority of people looking to gain muscle use the same training pattern. This will be a split by where you train each muscle group intensely with a range of exercises around once a week. Some top athletes will occasionally train a muscle group twice a week for stubborn or lagging body parts. An example would be to train chest & triceps on a monday performing 3,4 or 5 exercises including multiple sets.

Why is it so popular?

Because it works, people wouldn’t do it if it didn’t work. Admittedly newcomers to the local gym may follow the workouts of their favourite pro athlete or a friend in much better shape than themselves. This is a good point for me to mention that yes for 2 years I myself did this, I followed workouts from pro bodybuilders like Jay Cutler, Ronnie Coleman, all the workouts from various magazines. I made gains but only very steady gains no matter how much I exhausted myself.

Now onto the good stuff, if you purely wish to gain muscle then this is definitely a training style worth mentioning.

Hypertrophy Specific Training (HST)

When looking to gain muscle the main aim of your workouts is achieve ‘Hypertrophy’ which is the enlargement of cells, in this particular instance, muscle cells!  HST incorporates basic principles to enable more efficient workouts. The basic theory of how your muscles adapt is that, when you progressively overload the muscle, week by week the tissue adjusts and becomes resistant to the damaging effect of that particular load. Now this said in theory you could keep increasing the weight forever? But not in practice, there is a maximum limit to your strength at any given time. So with HST you begin with higher repetitions to help prep and condition the muscles and tendons for heavier loads. Then, when your max limit is achieved, you decrease the repetitions which will allow you to continue increasing the load, this can be broken down into very specific and small increments of change. Finally when you have reached a very low rep range and a very high load you now need to de-condition. By taking a week or maybe two off from this particular style of training, you allow the muscles to rest and fully recover so that when you start HST again you can stimulate muscle growth more effectively! As we discussed before, muscles tissue adapts. This will all sound pretty obvious to some people, but the difference comes when choosing volume, research suggests that any sets following the first set simply burns calories and does not contribute to hypertrophy. Something anyone trying to gain muscle will want to avoid. There’s nothing wrong with burning calories but it won’t help you gain muscle!

My current workout plan: based on HST principles.
Notes:
I will do 2 working sets for each exercise (always ensure you warm up each muscle group first to avoid injury)
and follow these rep ranges:
-2 weeks of 15 reps
-2 weeks of 10 reps
-2 weeks of 5 reps
-1 week deconditioning

When i restart at 15 reps again, i look back at the weights i pushed on my last day of 15 reps and aim to beat that on my first workout this way i continually overload!

You’ll notice that I alternate between two exercises each workout, this is just to help work the muscle from a different angle. However I do not get on well with stiff leg deadlifts so I perform leg curls at every workout. Also I do calf press (on the leg press machine) every workout because I’m really trying to target the gastrocnemius rather than the soleus muscle in the calves. Ideally I should do a further 2 weeks of 2 reps, but I prefer to return to the higher reps sooner as towards the end of the 5 rep stage my form starts to go off.
This article is not the be all end all of muscle gaining theory, we discover new information everyday, but I’ve tried it and have made good gains, so it may be worth giving it a try yourself!
Thanks for reading guys!
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