What's The Best Way To Build Muscle?

A reader, JM from Australia, wrote in to ask a question about building muscle.

"A lot of the routines I see in the bodybuilding magazines involve 20-30 sets per muscle group in each workout," wrote JM. "And each muscle group gets trained only once per week. But your programs don't have as many sets, and the muscles are trained more frequently. Surely the routines that professional bodybuilders use are the best way to build muscle?"

Here's what I told JM...

Professional bodybuilders will typically use large training volumes (e.g. lots of sets and repetitions) and/or various techniques designed to fatigue the muscle (such as forced repetitions or descending sets).

These kind of high-volume, high-fatigue workouts create a large amount of muscle damage. And as with any injury, the more damage you create the longer it'll take to heal. So if you use a very high volume of exercise for each muscle group, you'll need more recovery time before training that muscle again (that's one reason training each muscle group once per week has become so popular).

The problem is that anything professional bodybuilders do has to be seen in light of the fact that the majority (with the exception of those competing in "natural" contests, and even then I have my doubts about some of them) are using vast amounts of anabolic drugs.

You can't take a program used by a heavily drug-assisted genetically gifted champion bodybuilder and assume that someone who trains without the same level of pharmaceutical assistance will get the same results simply by following the same program. It just doesn't happen.

Going back to your original question, there are a few reasons why such high-volume, high-fatigue workouts are not optimal for the natural trainee who wants to build muscle.

Firstly, while a small amount of damage helps to trigger growth, too much is counterproductive. Damaged tissue won't respond as well to the various anabolic hormones your body produces, such as testosterone, which may limit the potential for growth.

What's more, studies show that the short-term increase in protein synthesis that occurs after a workout returns to normal after 36-48 hours. And simply creating more muscle damage doesn't appear to make this rise in protein synthesis last any longer.

(SIDE NOTE: This is covered in more detail on Gavin Laird's Ultimate Hypertrophy Training website.)

In other words, when you train a muscle group directly only once per week, the muscles might spend a few days in an "anabolic state" after the workout. But for the rest of the week you're missing a second (and maybe even a third) opportunity to stimulate more growth. Blitzing your muscles just once a week with lots of sets, repetitions and high-fatigue methods is going to extend your recovery time. But it's not necessarily going to make you grow any faster.

If you've built a decent "base" of muscle and want to improve certain muscle groups, then some kind of split routine might be the way to go. But it's my view that most people will respond best to either a) a whole-body workout done 2-3 times per week or b) an upper-lower body routine performed four days each week.

I've covered the subject of training frequency in more detail in Do This And Your Muscles Will Get Bigger.

And if you're looking for step-by-step training programs that incorporate these principles, take a look at the Maximum Muscle Plan.

The four-day program is the one I'm using at the moment, though you can turn it into a three-day routine, which means that each muscle group is worked three times over a two-week period.

As I mentioned earlier, one other resource you'll find extremely useful is Gavin Laird's Ultimate Hypertrophy Training site.

I'd read quite a few of his articles and forum posts, and downloaded his e-book at the weekend. Not only do you get detailed information about how a muscle grows, Gavin also reveals why most people get it completely wrong when it comes to building bigger muscles and – more important – how you can be one of the few to get it right.

This isn't a book full of theory and no practical application, and there are some great sample training programs that you can use right away to start packing on muscle.

You can read some of Gavin's articles here.