I want to go ahead and get this hard bit out of the way, before anyone has anything smart to say about it, or start debating about which method is best, blah di blah. The scientific community DOESN'T FUCKING KNOW the best way to build muscle.
This is a hard truth to swallow, particularly for someone that is trying to break into the world of weight training.
There are a few things that we DO know. We know that there are two forms of hypertrophy (muscle growth), myofibrillar, and sarcoplasmic. Myofibrillar hypertrophy is an increase in the number of contractile proteins increase in number; this directly makes the muscle stronger, and although it does increase the size of the muscle very little, the size growth is minimal. Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is an increase in the sarcoplasmic fluid in the muscle cells, growing the cells themselves. This is the kind of muscle growth that bodybuilders aim for primarily as it is what grows the muscle the most, and the fastest.
We have a pretty good grasp of myofibrillar hypertrophy (hereafter referred to as MH) in comparison to sarcoplasmic (hereafter referred to as SH). MH increases with the progressive increasing of stress on the muscle, causing the muscle to need to produce more force. The general consensus, and the prevailing practice, is to load the lifting weight between 60 and 90% of the 1RM (one-rep maximum) and lifting in a rep range of 1-6 repetitions for multiple sets.
Some lifters swear by this method as being the best for developing an ideal body concerning aesthetics as well as functionality. Jamie Lewis' Chaos and Pain program has multiple facets, of multiple kinds of lifts, of multiple manners of lifting, but has a strong foundation in lifting very heavy for sets of low repetitions, and although we know that this is primarily a different kind of muscle development than what would produce the biggest kind of muscle, Jamie is powerfully built, inordinately lean, and, expectedly, very very strong.
Which leads me to my next point: for every kind of method of producing SH (read: larger muscles), there are people that tout it that LOOK JACKED AND AMAZING. It's hard to look someone built like Jamie in the eye and tell him, "umm, actually sir, according to studies, low rep ranges produce primarily myofibrillar hypertrophy," first of all because he'd punch you in the throat, and secondly because he's probably bigger than you.
So my job, in searching out the best way to increase my muscle mass (and strength also, I want to experience an increase in both kinds of hypertrophy, but the mystery of SH is the source of the ignorance) is primarily to experiment. I need to just get in the gym, continuously activate my muscles, and try out every kind of program under the sun to test how my body reacts to each one.
One theory for increasing mass is that it is not the severity of the stress put on the targeted muscle group, but the duration of the stress. The best example for this kind of lifting pattern is what is known as German Volume Training, or GVT.
GVT, famous for it's 100 reps-per-day plan, is simple. You pick a different lift, (in most cases, one per day since the volume is so high) and you perform 10 sets of 10 reps with the same weight. This is designed to keep your muscle operating under the same intensity of stress for the longest possible duration.
The thing about GVT is that, although I could find it recommended EVERYWHERE as the "best" program to build massive amounts of lean muscle in the shortest amount of time, I could find absolutely NO empirical results from a person saying that they grew any faster than with any other program, nor could I find any scholarly article that has produced positive results with that kind of lifting.
Possible criticisms that may lead to its inefficacy may be the infrequency of activation per muscle group. In this pattern, sometimes, an individual muscle may only be activated once a week. Some studies suggest that a muscle is fully repaired and ready to be activated again after 48 hours, and others say that, with proper rest and nutrition, they can perform again in as few as six hours, and begin to atrophy after 48.
It also may be that the reps are so high and the weight so (relatively) low that this program crosses the nigh-imperceptible line into aerobic and cardiovascular exercise. That kind of workout, although proven to be good for your heart health, and burns quite a few calories (if you're into that sort of thing) does very little, if any, good for your body composition change or metabolism.
Again, this program, being without anecdotal proof or clinical evidence, still has hundreds upon hundreds of supporters and trainers using this method to try and add slabs of LBM onto bodies of lifters.
So if it's not a heavy-ass weight for few reps, nor is it light-ass weight for many reps, then how DO you build bigger muscle tissue?
To be continued...
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