𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐆𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐌𝐮𝐬𝐜𝐥𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐖𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞 (requested thread - hopefully short)

1. The fundamentals of muscle hypertrophy revolve around provided a sufficient stimulus (resistance exercise) and recovery (post workout anabolic state)

2. Stimulus - The goal is to do enough work to recruit all your muscle fibers (some are only recruited as you use heavy loads or get fatigued) for a minimum amount of time-under-tension.

3. Stimulus - I won't harp on this too much as there's plenty out there on preferred rep ranges / weight levels. On a weekly level, one might need 5-7 real work sets per muscle group to generate sufficient stimulus. This can be broken up different ways (more on that later)

4. Stimulus - one key point is 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐮𝐬𝐡 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐮𝐫𝐞. In fact this is counterproductive mostly - muscle and neural fatigue will ruin any following sets and reduce total workload capacity. Best to keep for end of a workout.

5. Recovery - Resistance exercise induces a series of signals that triggers muscle protein synthesis - aka building of new muscle cells. But there is also muscle protein breakdown. Maxing synthesis means taking advantage of the anabolic window

6. Recovery - The key potential anabolic window occurs in the first 24 hours after resistance exercise. The body is primed to increase muscle protein synthesis. But that is not sufficient. The body generally needs to be in a caloric surplus during that time period.

7. Recovery - 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐛𝐮𝐫𝐧. Don't stuff yourself silly, but maybe up to 500 kCal more. So you will have to eat more just to compensate for the additional calories burned from the workout AND up to 500 kCal more than that.

8. Recovery - so basically if you workout in the morning, you'd want to eat more food than normal the rest of the day, and possibly the next morning. This surplus of calories is going to preferentially build more muscle vs. fat because of the anabolic window you have created

9. Because of the surplus, you will be gaining some fat. But the ratio of muscle / fat growth is much higher than normal. If you ate the same way without exercise, more of the calories would go to fat cell growth.

10. Genetics also affect these ratios. Some people will gain more muscle / less fat from the same workout and food intake as someone else. So someone with a worse ratio will be gaining more fat and take more months / years to accumulate the same amount of muscle growth

11. If you weightlift most days like most "bros", then most days you need to be a caloric surplus. Gaining both muscle and fat. But that is inefficient and not pleasing (constantly gaining fat)

12. The obvious solution is full-body workouts. Say 2 full-body workouts a week is plenty of stimulus but allows plenty of recovery. For those 2 24 hr periods post workout, you would eat a caloric surplus to be in an anabolic state, but all other days can be in a calorie deficit

13. On caloric deficit days, you are in a catabolic state (breaking down), but you will burn off more fat than muscle. Thus over a week, you can in net gain muscle and keep fat the same (or reduce fat). This allows continual "body recomposition"

14. I have evolved into essentially 1.5 workouts per week. Muscles need 72-96 hours to fully recover from a resistance workout. I tend to have one full workout and then a "quickie" after a cardio session to keep everything engaged and strong until the next full session.

15. This is a hilariously minimal amount of time for resistance training. Say 1 hr + 15 minutes on the 2nd session of the week. Even that can be parsed down further since additional sets always give diminishing marginal returns.

16. How do you fit in all the exercises in a full body routine? Circuit training essentially. Muscles need more recovery time ( a few minutes) than the entire body (cardiovascular). Alternating exercises allows optimization of this

17. Example: Chest, legs, back, core, shoulders, core, Repeat 3-4x. ~ minute break in between. Focus on complex, multi-joint movements earlier on, later add in single joint stuff.

18. This method allows for plenty days for focusing on other healthy movements, notably cardio. My cardio routine would be for another thread I think. But suffice to say I am pushing the boundary what 200 lbs runners can do :P

@jasondebolt