Muscle Growth

Getting stronger isn't just "lift heavy things." Strength is built through two core training principles and four distinct adaptive systems in the body — and understanding them changes how you should structure your training. Specificity Comes First The most important principle in strength training is specificity: your training has to stimulate the exact systems that produce the performance you want. Specificity exists on a spectrum. Practicing the competition lift itself is th

If you've spent any time in a gym, you've heard the theories: lift heavy for "real" gains, chase the pump, or just get sore enough and you'll grow. The truth is that muscle growth (hypertrophy) isn't caused by one single thing — it's driven by a handful of measurable stimuli working together, some more powerful than others. Here's a breakdown of the main theories and stimulators of hypertrophy, and what they mean for how you should actually train. The Big Three: Tension, Meta