The 6 Fundamental Laws of Muscle Growth

Practicing bodybuilding means stimulating muscle growth through a progressive adaptation phenomenon called hypertrophy skeletal muscle fibers. Every workout you do will therefore aim to make you gain muscle and strength, the two elements being able to be dissociated. This means that if you gain muscle mass , you can gain strength and vice versa but it is not systematic or linear. Depending on the physical training carried out, you can obtain more or less strong fibers according to their volume. This same muscle volume will evolve more or less depending on the exercise. In addition, the years of practice in resistance or endurance will condition the muscle strength gain or the increase in endurance and resistance to effort over time. Indeed, physiological adaptation phenomena are complex, such as scientific research demonstrated it. But there are, however, some general rules. We have called these rules the 6 fundamental laws of muscle growth.

The 6 Fundamental Laws of Muscle Growth Through Hypertrophy and Strength Gain

To make steady progress in bodybuilding, you must keep in mind that your body is an extraordinary machine, but one that responds to fairly precise physiological rules. These rules have limits, even if they give us many advantages, particularly in terms of energy release and post-workout adaptation of the lean muscle by hypertrophy as we have specified. To take this data into account, we will deal with athletic progression in bodybuilding by focusing on 6 major laws or general principles. Respecting these major rules will allow you to always optimize strength gain and muscle mass .

1 – Stimulate muscle growth with strength training

Once your diet is properly established, the first stimulus for muscle growth will naturally depend on the quality of your training. This will begin with determining an exercise program that matches your physical condition, your training capacity, and your recovery time. In other words, it's your bodybuilding experience. Broadly speaking, bodybuilding exercises focused on sets of 8 to 12 repetitions will stimulate muscle hypertrophy.

However, you have two broad categories (called type I, IIa, IIb) of muscle fibers. Type I is more durable, slow-twitch, and uses primarily ATP from the mitochondria. Type II is fast-twitch and fatigues more quickly, using glucose as an energy source. In practical terms, this means that to fully develop your muscles in hypertrophy and strength , you will need to work as much in short sets of 4 to 6 repetitions to target the growth of muscle fibers as in endurance (sets of 12, 15 repetitions on average) in order to stimulate sarcoplasmic hypertrophy (sarcoplasm generally corresponds to the internal environment of muscle fibers).

2 – Exceed your limits by training often, is there an ideal training frequency?

To stimulate muscle growth, you will necessarily need to repeat your workouts frequently while allowing sufficient recovery periods for your body so that it can recover both in terms of the muscles themselves (hypertrophy) and in terms of the nervous system. Indeed, muscle hypertrophy depends on neuromuscular recovery which involves many physiological processes. Let's add that if you are young, weeks of 5 workouts can be considered, but the older you get, the more time you will need to give your body to recover properly. But in any case, if you space your workouts out by several days, you will progress less quickly than if your training frequency is optimal in relation to your post-exercise recovery capacity.

In any case, having three or four days of exercises will always allow you to organize your training in splits, that is to say to work different muscle groups on the same day. This way, you can combine a large muscle group (like the back for example) with another smaller muscle group (let's say the triceps). With 4 days of exercise per week, you can perfectly organize yourself to work each muscle group while leaving enough rest days between each session. On the other hand, if you only benefit from 2 or 3 days of training per week, Full Body (or Half Body) exercise programs can be considered.

3 – Practice many poly-articular movements and focus on technique

Strength training isn't just about multi-joint movements like bench presses, squats, or deadlifts. However, they are essential exercises for building muscle mass and strength. This type of exercise stimulates multiple muscle groups. They trigger a greater hormonal release than if you limit yourself to isolation exercises like deadlifts. curls or triceps push-downs, for example. However, certain exercises that recruit many different muscles, such as the barbell row or the back row, also have these benefits. But in any case, the 3 exercises of the squat, the deadlift, and the bench press are essential for physical development. They will allow you to develop your physical strength and, consequently, to develop your muscle mass.

4 – Change your exercise programs, sets, reps, loads and training habits

Once you've mastered the technique for most exercises and your exercise program is in place, it will give you good results. However, after a while, maybe 6 months, one or three years, you'll start to get into an unproductive routine. Your motivation to train will also decrease over time. From there, you'll need to change exercises, evolve your training program, add or reduce volume (add or remove sets of exercises), or even do longer or shorter sets. These changes will help you never get stuck in an exercise routine that's counterproductive to your progress in muscle mass and strength. Then try to see how your body reacts to these changes. If necessary, modify your diet according to your nutritional needs and adapt your rest periods...

5 – Cardio training would be counterproductive if practiced in excess…

If you're serious about weight training, it's to gain muscle and strength based on the principles of resistance training. From this, you might think that cardio training is completely useless. In reality, this is not the case, as cardio training and the muscular endurance it stimulates will be very useful for your progress when you do resistance training. Cardio stimulates the generation of new mitochondria and therefore, the muscle's ability to supply itself with energy. This sport is also essential for cardiac health and myocardial endurance. As you can see, its name suggests.

On the other hand, excessive cardio will lead to a decrease in muscle mass and strength. Try to understand that you can't do everything at once! Indeed, endurance and resistance are two very different ways of working the muscles, and you can't be strong in both areas simultaneously; you'll have to choose one or the other!

6 – Periodize your training with realistic goals for muscle growth

When you have 3, 4 or 5 years of bodybuilding experience, or even more, you will logically be led to periodize your training. That is to say, you will devote part of your year to gaining muscle mass, you will work on a cycle for strength, another cycle for density, hypertrophy or for muscle definition. Each of these cycles is based on specific exercises or training methods, but you will get more progress from them than if you spent your year of exercises always doing more or less the same thing. Changing and defining training periods are two essential elements of bodybuilding. Let's say that two major periods will punctuate your years of training: muscle mass gain and cutting. However, nothing prevents you, for example, from working on strength cycles based on polyarticular exercises (squat, deadlift, bench press ) or endurance cycles. Nothing prevents you from returning to more classic muscle building afterwards.

Above all, we hope that these few essential rules will help you stimulate your muscle growth more effectively, and for a long time!