What I have learned since 1968 lifting weights is that muscular growth happens quite slowly most of the time. You usually cannot see the growth happening except over months.
Second point is that there is a relationship between muscular size and strength. If you can bench 225 for 10 reps and have X size arms then if you can bench 275 for 10 reps your arms will be X + 1" or so.
Third point is there are few guys who build huge arms. How come? Well, it could be several things and maybe more than one factor combining to make a difference.
In any population some people are taller, smarter, or whatever we want to measure. Thus, some males will have larger muscles. This is a statistical phenomenon.
One reason for having few huge guys is that perhaps the effort required goes up exponentially. It might take twice or three times the effort to go from 17 inch arms to 19 inch arms.
Since most guys won't invest that much effort or are incapable of doing so, that would explain why there are not many guys with huge arms.
I deduce from these considerations that muscles are reluctant to hypertrophy to the huge state. That means you have to train in a fashion that gives the muscles a reason or need to get bigger.
If this is so then you have to do something extraordinary to keep a muscle growing....it certainly won't grow unless the stimulus is there. I conclude that when I train I have to go to failure
on most sets after warming up. Huge muscles are capable of repeating heavy efforts many times after a short rest. That means I have to do many sets with a stimulating resistance. What I do
is keep the weight the same but rest a bit longer between sets. Of course there are many 'equivalent' protocols that might work as well. You accumulate a few seconds from each set to failure and these add up if
enough sets to failure are done. Perhaps 1 to 2 minutes of extreme intensity must be accumulated from many sets taken to failure. This could be 10 to 20 total sets for biceps and triceps.
Experience has shown me that some exercises are more effective than others re hypertrophy. So this can make a huge difference. You have to find out by trial and error or learn from guys who have
this information. In my case I modified or invented equipment that is more effective for arm training.
How about frequency? When is the ideal time to retrain the growing muscle? This has not been established by exercise science. If we look at when protein synthesis slows or stops then perhaps training
every 2nd or 3rd day is optimal. Mike Mentzer insisted that many trainees required longer intervals to cause more hypertrophy. It is controversial whether a muscle needs to recover before another workout.
Anecdotal information suggests that muscles can still grow even if not fully recovered. There is the issue of repeated bout effect that has to be overcome. Training while still a little sore might overcome that RBE.
Another factor here is safety. The most effective exercises and protocols might not be the safest. I found out through personal experience that it is easy to damage the sheath that goes over the elbow joint.
What this means is that when you train biceps or triceps you have to make sure your elbows don't contact pads. The friction there will cause damage which will be experienced as pain. Everything is compounded
by the fact that the growing muscle is becoming much stronger. When really heavy weights are lifted they are also dangerous. One way to reduce the risk of injury is to both warm up longer and to do more reps.
If you keep the reps over 10 and aim at somewhere around 15 that might be all round safer and more effective. After the 3rd heavy set what happens is that you can't do as many reps. If you start with 15 reps you
might decrease to about 7 to 10 by the 5th set. When the reps drop off significantly this might be the signal that hypertrophy will occur.
Which bring up another factor in hypertrophy. Larry Scott found that if he could pump his arms larger than ever then they would be bigger the next day. That means you should always aim at getting a bigger pump.
Doing more reps is one way to increase the blood flow in the muscle. Occlusion might contribute to hypertrophy as well. Which is partly why pumping works.
Let us now mention waste products while training and beyond. Larry would train to an extremely painful lactic acid state over and over. No pain, no gain is the message here. Again, just about everyone knew about
this saying but the reality is few ever persist with this kind of training. It takes a certain extreme motivation and even craziness to persist with extremely painful training.
The other pain from damage and waste products is the Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness that occasionally appears after doing something new or extraordinary. That soreness can persist for days after say training calves really hard. This phenomenon usually occurs when one is starting resistance training and disappears after a week or two of weight training. We can ask both what is happening in the muscles to cause this pain and
also why that pain happens at all. DOMS seems to be a message to the brain to take it easy and not to repeat what caused the soreness. We all know this and most personal trainers hold back on the sets when initiating anyone to weight training. Do two sets and not more and there shouldn't be too much soreness the following days. This is common sense re broscience.
Now consider this thought experiment. What would happen to a muscle if the stimulus was such that after each and every workout significant DOMS resulted and persisted for a few days? Would the muscle grow rapidly?
It is my conjecture that they would, in fact, keep growing rapidly. There would be an increase in strength as well and this increase would be substantial.
That is all I want to discuss at the moment. Intelligent people should be able to distill what to do from these considerations. Hypertrophy is not only possible but inevitable if these principles are applied correctly.
Sometimes knowledge isn't sufficient. What is also a requirement is correct application of those principles. Unless sufficient mechanical tension of adequate intensity is applied for the right amount of time then rapid hypertrophy won't and can't occur. This is where some might require an instructor to guide the process. Some people literally can't get results even when guided which is surprising but a reality. I suspect that DJ is one of these people. If you watch his form when doing dips on that Technogym machine then it is clear he is devoid of sense and ability to train properly.
One point not mentioned is that occasional lay offs might help hypertrophy.
