The Most Important Word in Fitness Starts with “H”

If you’re younger than 35 years old, stop reading now. For the rest of us, your word of the week is also the most important thing you can do for your health going forward. It’s hypertrophy. 

The H-word is the term that describes the building of lean muscle tissue in the body. In fact, hypertrophy is the most important thing for the future of your fitness journey because at your age you’re losing muscle every year. This has many downsides, but two main ones:

1. Losing muscle tissue means you’ll be less physically able each year.
2. Losing muscle means you’ll also be less metabolically efficient. This means it will be harder to be lean and easier to gain fat each year. 

Sounds like doom and gloom, right? 

Well, not if you do something about it. Even the world’s best medical doctors on aging, longevity, and healthspan are emphasizing hypertrophy for adult populations. 

We focus on hypertrophy in GPP often during the main move and especially during the accessory portions of the day. As it turns out, there are some movements, repranges, and training elements that can specifically drive muscle growth. 

There are three main components to building muscle of note: 

1. Mechanical Tension: choosing movements and weights that are heavy enough to move (4-15 reps, in general) are ripe environments for enough tension to drive change in the muscle. 
2. Muscle Damage: the eccentric portion of the lift is most important when damaging the muscle (in a healthy) way, so movements that include and even emphasize the lowering of weights are key to muscle growth.
3. Metabolic Stress: the best way to increase metabolic stress is to do multiple sets of exercises with rest periods that are only long enough to complete the bout unbroken. 

Want to go deep on hypertrophy? You’re in luck, because hypertrophy work has a nickname: bodybuilding.