Hypertrophy Routine: Build your Muscles

Javier Colomer 10 min. of reading Fitness Leave a comment

This hypertrophy routine will help you gain muscle mass once a for all!

In this article, we will show you a series of schemes and tips that will help you increase your muscle mass or muscle fibers. But first, you should ask yourself the following questions:

Are you tired of wandering around in the gym, without a clear objective in mind?
Do you change routine every time a friend tells you to?
Do you really want to reach your goals and improve your physique?
Are you trying to gain more lean muscle mass?

If your answer has been “yes” to all the previous questions, you are in for a treat. Keep reading this article because we are going to show you the way to start getting results!

Now more than ever, if you really want to grow and gain muscle to become stronger, get ready!

Index

1 Why do you not see the results at the Gym?
2 Hypertrophy and Stagnation
3 Hypertrophy Routine
4 Strength Mesocycle
5 Hypertrophy Routine: Mesocycle
6 Hypertrophy Macrocycle Summary
7 What do we have to eat during a Hypertrophy Routine?
8 Related Entries

Why do you not see the results at the Gym?

There are a few reasons why most people do not get the results they expected when they do exercise. Particularly, they believe that the technique or routine they follow do not work when it comes to muscle growth.

You may have probably gotten used to the same old pattern: exercise 4 days, sets and reps like 3×10 or 2×15, chest and biceps…

You may have experienced some of the following circumstances…

Lack of a plan or objective: You wander around from machine to machine, doing exercises without a specific order. In fact, you even repeat some exercise in order to avoid others.
Muscle group: Moreover, you do not use the same intensity for legs and arms. How long has it been since you did a deadlift? You probably even exercise the same muscle several times a week…
Correct technique: Do you respect the movement range? You can substantially improve by focusing on this aspect.
Changing workout routine frequently, since you probably have not planned your workout routine.
Paying attention to the number of reps and breaks between sets.
Always with the same weight, is it hard for you to add more weight?
Stretching and warming up, do you warm up progressively?
Eat properly, are you eating to gain weight or to lose it?
Rest enough, do you have days of rest in your plan? Do you know what active rest is?

Hypertrophy and Stagnation

The Hypertrophy routine has always had the same pattern. Above all, we usually followed the advice of a gym monitor, who was influenced by the magazines of the time or who focused on the most popular users.

Consequently, any beginner who started to go to the gym followed the “same training”, which was: Monday – chest, Tuesday – shoulder… In other words, a pattern that probably everyone (including myself) has followed at some point.

In reality, this worked when it came to gaining muscle mass or what is known as Hypertrophy. In fact, it is enough to produce a stimulus, eat wisely and rest.

Obviously, this was easy for someone that is young and who has never lifted a dumbbell, bar or machine. More importantly, it is someone who has the time to do exercise and eat, which is why the results are remarkable, specially during the first year.

Routine and nutrition with rest…

What happened afterwards was what we all know, a point of stagnation. What has worked so far no longer does, and it may make us feel unmotivated.

The explanation is simple: there is a lack of progression with the weight or lineal method, the same exercises and intensity for all the muscle groups… not adding a strategy like descending sets or supersets, or always doing exercises until failure…

…Your body has adapted to the type of workout…

In fact, our body needs new stimuli in order to avoid entering the comfort zone. If we always use the same pattern, it is not going to produce a different response to what it is used to.

Row with reserve grip, another way to stimulate the muscle fibers

Hypertrophy Routine

With this strategy, we are going to try to avoid entering the same loop as we did before. If this is your case and you have spend years in the same situation, it is time to change.

Our focus will be similar to a more professional planning. It does not matter if you are a beginner or if you have been doing exercise for 5 years, if you go to the gym or play another different sport. In fact, anyone can use this pattern, which will mainly be made up of two mesocycles:

Strength
Hypertrophy

Strength Mesocycle

Why include a strength workout in a routine that is meant to gain muscle mass?

The old school is probably more reticent to adding this kind of changes. However, we are here to improve, so keep reading if you are interested. The reason is quite simple:

The stronger you are, the more weight you will be able to lift. Consequently, it results in more stimulus and also, more progress.

That’s it. If you are stronger and you can lift 20 more kilos with the same reps, there is no need to tell what is going to happen, right? However, there are some rules. If you have been doing exercise for a short time, doing a 3×12 or 4×10 is going to increase your strength. But if you keep that pattern, it will not be enough in a short period of time.

Duration

7 weeks

Basics

Then, the first phase is going to be focused on gaining strength. Although this does not mean that we are going to exclusively do strength exercises. Rather, we will use the most efficient exercises, the basics: Squats, Deadlift, Military Press and Bench Press.

We will proceed to the rest of exercises after improving with these ones.

In fact, these exercises should always be present in our routine. The main reason is the amount of muscles that are involved and their impact on our hormone system. After all, they increase the Testosterone and Growth Hormone levels.

The order of the exercises is extremely important, which will also produce a lot of fatigue. That is why the extra exercises tend to involve smaller muscle groups or they are auxiliary exercises

Know your RM

Regarding the weight we are going to use, it will be a percentage calculated on our RM.

For those who do not know, the RM is the Repetition Maximum. In other words, it is the highest weight we can lift in one go, because we would fail in the next one. This is a very basic concept in strength training, since we would practically be wasting our time without knowing this.

Know your limits and it will be easier to overcome them.

That is the most simple explanation in order to defend why you should calculate your 1RM

Frequency

The frequency (F), or the number of weekly workouts (repetition of muscle group) we are going to follow will be F3 (3 workouts a week).

At first, you may think that it is too little. But as soon as you start exercising, you will see how it saturates the nervous system (CNS) and how important it is to rest. Both for the neuromuscular fatigue as well as to assimilate the workout stimulus properly.

You have probably heard that less is more, but the truth is that better is better…

Sets and Repetitions

In strength workouts, the number of sets tends to be higher we our objective is just hypertrophy.

The same thing happens with the number of reps in each set but just the other way around. We will do around 5-6 sets and between 1-6 reps. The break between reps will change depending on the workout routine.

Learn more about how long you need to rest between sets

Intensity

Regarding the intensity, we will move between 80-95% of our RM.

Can you keep a high intensity for an hour and a half?

Strength Workout increases the Hypertrophy

For those who are still a bit sceptical: there is no doubt that strength training can help you gain muscle mass.

Bars and plates are basic accessories when it comes to gaining muscle. You can do all the basics: squat, deadlift, bench press and military press.

Some people call it Functional Hypertrophy. In this article, we tell you what it is as well as some examples.

Hypertrophy Routine: Mesocycle

What everyone knows as Gaining Muscle

Once we are stronger, now it is time to focus all that potential in increasing the muscle mass. Above all, the main difference will be to change the weight percentage of our RM for the basics, apart from changing the structure of the sets and reps.

Chest-Leg and Full Body

This mesocycle is made up of two microcyles at the same time, which are two variations of the following routines:

First of all, CL means that we will work either the lower or upper body. Therefore, the frequency will be F2 + F2, or two days for each part, 4 days a week. Here, we will use advanced techniques, such as Drop Sets or Wave Loading, specially for the most powerful exercises, such as bench press. Get ready, because these 4 days are going to be quite intense!

On the other hand, the FB will have a F3 frequency. Above all, we will use techniques such as SuperSets or Compound Sets, where we will use our whole body.

Duration

Chest-Leg -> 3 weeks
Full Body -> 3 weeks

Exercises

Let’s stick to the basics, but this time we will also include exercises such as Quadriceps Extension or Femoral Curl, for example. The order will be different, the workout routine corresponds to the strength training or the hypertrophy routine.

Sets and Reps

Depending on the muscles that we use, we will change both the number of sets as well as the reps and exercises. But in general: sets of 3-4 with 8-12 reps for bigger muscle groups, while smaller muscle groups do sets of 2-5 and reps of 10-15.