Day 11 - Targeting Hypertrophy

In the time since I've become serious about this little hobby of mine, I have tried dozens and dozens of prescribed workout programs. After a couple years of devoting a lot of time and energy and money into it, you find yourself approaching a bit of a plateau.

I did have some wild success with a few programs. Leo Costa's "Big Beyond Belief" in particular helped grow at such a rate that I developed stretch marks across my chest and shoulders. However, the degree of success I found, was not what I could plainly see by people in the real world.

This observation of radical growth in size and strength seemed to be at odds with the facts and theories presented to me everywhere. On one hand, "experts," scientists, and bros that are big in the gym are all reporting the same story to me: according to every resource available to me in person, there is a strict cap on the rate and limit that someone can grow naturally, and anything past that must be steroid-induced.

I can see individuals, granted that they are movie stars, professional athletes and people of privilege, grow extremely fast, much faster than my own progress of anyone I have met in person. Mark Wahlberg, in preparation for Pain and Gain added 40 pounds of muscle in just three months. Did he use steroids? Henry Cavill added 30 to play Superman in Man of Steel, perhaps the most radical example is Christian Bale's radical transformation in just half a year between his malnourished state in The Machinist and his bulky, athletic shape in Batman Begins. He added 100 pounds.

On the contrary, when I spoke with the "authorities" near me, I found completely different stories. Supposedly, the body can only healthily add one pound of muscle (maybe 2-3) a month, according to the trainers at Gold's Gym. YouTube famous Hodge Twins concur at around 1-2 pounds. The few bodybuilders, (nobody with any international degree of success) I can reach out to, barely gave me the time of day, since I'm such a noob who wants the "easy way," and instead just told me that it took them decades or longer to get there.

I've averaged at around 2-3 pounds a month since I started building myself. (The mean of change, counting the weight at lean periods after cutting cycles) And if that is, truly, the fastest way I can build myself without taking a performance-enhancing drug, then so be it. I will continue. I won't stop until my physique rivals Calum Von Moger with the leanness of Lazar Angelov.

But I'm not convinced that it IS the fastest I can grow. My theory is that there are enlightened individuals in the world that only share their secrets when there are exclusively ridiculous amounts of money, fame or prestige involved, like the invitation-only accessible gym where the bodies behind 300 and Man of Steel were built. (This sounds a lot like the babbling of a conspiracy theorist, doesn't it?)

But I don't have that access, or that type of money or fame, (yet!!) so I have to rely on the only tool I have: my functioning brain.

I have decided to measure growth and progress of multiple programs in six week periods, keep track of which ones work and by how much, compare and contrast them, and work them over until I get it down to a simple formula. What similarity lies between all of the periods of growth? What is different?

I have completed such cycles of Big Beyond Belief, Huge In A Hurry, Body Beast, German Volume Training, Chaos and Pain, and Blueprint. For the brodyssey, I needed to do something special, however. I wanted to do something different, something that challenges my own beliefs and assumptions about weight training, and will teach me new tricks and concepts.

I went to scholarly articles concerning muscle growth so that my attempt will be founded by science. There aren't many studies conducted to determine optimal hypertrophy stimulation, but there was one that stood out. Charles T. Ridgely, M.S., a physicist that has been devoting a lot of his time and energy to all forms of science, particularly bodybuilding, has written an article called Mechanical Model for Analyzing Adaption to Training. In this article, Ridgely applies his understanding of the mechanical motor unit to popular training programs to determine which would produce the best hypertrophic result.

The article, while unable to conclusively report a superiority among the programs, (High Intensity Training, German Volume Training or Hypertrophy Specific Training) did report that Hypertrophy Specific Training (or HST, created by Bryan Haycock) had the greatest potential for producing hypertrophy.

So I picked that one. Tomorrow, I'll break it down for you.