“Just lift hard and go heavy, bro” 

If you’ve ever delved into the abyss that is the internet or gone to a local gym in pursuit of an answer to muscle growth, then you’ve probably heard a variation of sorts to this answer.

So, is it right? Partially.

In order to grow, muscle requires three things from you and those are: Energy, sleep, and a stimulus for growth. Now, that last part is what we will focus on today.

In order to grow your muscles, they need to be challenged. Depending on your training experience, the amount of effort necessary will vary for beginners, intermediates, and advanced lifters. So, let’s get to it.

Training effort for muscle growth

Beginners:

Classified as lifters with 6-12 months of consistent lifting. If you’re a beginner, then the thing that matters most is showing up and completing your sessions. Your muscles are untrained, they’re hypersensitive to lifting and growth. It means that growth will be as rapid as it ever will be in accordance with your genetics.

Intermediates:

Lifters with at least 1 year of consistent lifting. As an intermediate, you are much more susceptible to plateaus and this can be for a variety of reasons, with one of these being a lack of hard training. Hard training includes pushing past discomfort close to or to complete failure. The rules still apply, your muscles still need a stimulus, only now you need to work harder to reach it. (hence failure)

Advanced:

Lifters who have been lifting for 5-10 years consistently. Advanced lifters like intermediates are prone to plateaus only to a much greater extent. Every set now needs to be taken close to or to failure in order to see any improvements and growth.

Failure:

Failure involves performing a set until you can’t produce the muscular strength necessary to complete another repetition. Or in other words, you can’t lift the weight up. As a beginner, there’s no need to concern yourself with failure if you don’t want to, as gains will come in regardless. However, after a few months as you reach the intermediate stage, you’ll need to test out your failure point for each exercise to ensure your training is close to it.

Testing out your failure point regularly and performing sets 1-3 repetitions shy of it will be crucial in ensuring you continue to progress steadily as you’ll be certain that your muscles are receiving that stimulus for growth they need.

Now, how heavy should you lift for muscle growth?

As long as you are training as outlined, it doesn’t matter. As long as each set is between 5-30 repetitions, the difference in muscle growth will be minuscule if present at all. Practice with multiple rep ranges and do whatever is most comfortable for you, which will vary from exercise to exercise, machine to machine.

Summary

Muscle growth when it comes down to it isn’t complicated. It requires three things: energy, sleep, a stimulus for growth.

In order to reach that stimulus, you need to take into account your training experience, are you a beginner, intermediate, or advanced? Train as you always do, and if you don’t or stop making gains, then you’ve reached a plateau, and it may be due to lack of hard training.

Take your sets 1-3 reps in reserve from failure for maximum growth within a 5-30 repetition range per set. In order to find this, test your failure by well, failing. Do this every week or 2 per exercise to ensure you’re getting stronger, progressing and of course, growing.

Stay safe (:

Transformation For Life