10 Years of Muscle Building Advice in 23 Minutes

If you can hit that, you've done 90, 95% of what you can possibly do to maximize your gains.

Today I'm bringing you exclusive insights from seven of the world's smartest muscle building scientists.

Don't you dare keep doing exercises that you think are must do because there is no such thing.

So we're talking about basically gaining a pound a week of nearly entirely lean mass gains.

Every muscle needs the same volume. There's nothing written in stone that says that.

And then I've also seen folks that as they become more well trained, benefit more from training.

Not to f you, the whole egg.

Group'S testosterone levels increased by 239 nanograms per deciliter. That is a freaking huge increase in testosterone.

Using their research, I create a step by step blueprint that will serve as your ultimate muscle building hack. So the first piece of the puzzle is figuring out your exercises. How many exercises should you do? What are the best exercises for each muscle? And how often should you change your exercises? To help answer these important questions is Dr. Mike Isratel, a brilliant professor with a PhD in sports physiology who clearly practices what he preaches.

You don't need 18 exercises per session, but if you overuse the number of exercises that you have, you end up going through all of your best stimulus to fatigue ratio exercises that you have realistic access to within a matter of a few months. So we want to conserve some variation. I would say that the number of exercises per muscle per week you should have in your plan something like 2 to 4.

Now as for what specific exercises to do for each muscle, here's Dr. Mice recommendations.

All right, where are we starting? Calves bottom up.

I was going to say chest.

Chest, bro. Unbelievable chest. Some kind a flat barbell or dumbbell pressing is a good idea. And then some incline work. And then lastly for chest, I would say some kind of flying movement is a good idea to do for most people.

Now the big guy back pull ups.

Rows and deadlifts with strict technique are the core of big back movements. I would also say flexion rows are a pretty good idea to do. It's where you let your back completely curl over and then you arch and extend your chest up super high at the top, which gives your back an extra extra juicy thickness that you know you just can't buy at the biceps. For biceps, I would say doing bicep curls from a stretched position of biceps is a good idea. Whether it's cable Bayesian curls behind the back incline, dumbbell curls, something like that. For triceps I would say there are at least three candidate types of movements you should consider doing. One is overhead movements because they really stretch, especially the long head of the tricep. Another one is some kind of isolation extension work. Things like cable pushdowns are a perfect exercise here. And the third thing I would suggest be some kind compound pressing work.

Shoulders.

I'd say for shoulders, almost all rear delt work is already done for you very well by proper back training. Almost all front delt work is done more than sufficiently by pressing for your chest. So I would say after that really you just need to focus on side delts. So I really like dumbbell lateral raises. Seated or standing with very good control. I like a variety of upright rows and of course a variety of cable laterals are all always really great for legs.

Do you want to do just legs together or you want to do separate quads?

Hamstrings, glutes, calves. Did you forget about calves? What the hell kind of channel are you running here?

Let's get calves over with.

I would say doing your calf raises with a straight leg more often than with a bent leg. Pre stretches the gastrocnemius muscle and thus also makes it grow much, much more impressively than with bent leg calves. You have to have them. Big ass stretch, the biggest stretch you can have, hold for two to four seconds and then come up. That's going to be the key with calf training.

Quads.

Yeah, quads. High bar barbell squats, Smith machine squats. Leg presses, X squats. Properly done leg extensions.

All right.

Hamstrings.

Some kind of hip hinges I like stiff like a deadlift with a regular barbell. You can do them with dumbbells too. And then I would say some combination of lying leg curls and seated leg curls. Seated leg curls are on average a little bit more effective because they do put the hamstring into a bigger stretch position. But as is the case with variation, nothing is the best for forever, you know, like, what is that? For every hot girl, there's a guy that's tired of dealing with her shit. So at some point, you know, if you really love seated leg curls, you're going to try lying leg curls and they're going to blow you out of the water just because you're not used to them.

Okay.

And then glutes, lunges have to be.

The core, some kind of lunging. And it doesn't matter much what kind, but front foot of front foot elevated and weight focused. Focused on the front foot is a really good idea. Then I would Say the next type of movement you want is some kind of hip thrust. And then, and then lastly, I would say some kind of very deep sumo squatting is also really awesome for the glutes.

So here's a master list of all the exercises Dr. M recommended. Now, before our next expert shows us the best workout splits to use these exercises with, we first need to answer the next question. How often should you change your exercises?

It's been shown a few times in the research literature that if you change exercises every single week to a different one, you actually shortcut away some of your growth. You probably want kind of the same ones over and over and over.

As for how to know when it is a good time to switch your exercises.

You're getting pumped, you're getting sore, you're getting annihilated, and you're progressing in load and reps and your joints feel quite good and the exercise isn't pissing you off a ton, there is no compelling reason to change that exercise. But if your exercise hurting your joints, it's pissing you off, et cetera. And there are other good candidates around. Don't you dare keep doing exercises that you think or must do. You go to your little lists that we just made of all the best exercises and you go, which one do I want to use? I'll try that one. You put them in, put them in, put them in, replace them, and then the whole thing keeps spinning.

So you've got your exercises. The next piece of the puzzle is volume and frequency. How many sets you do, how many days a week you work out, and the workout split you use are all crucial components of your training. This is where our next Expert comes in. Dr. Brad Schultenfeld. Brad runs a research lab dedicated to studying how to optimize muscle growth. He'll start by sharing how many sets we should do.

What I think we can draw based on the research in combination with anecdotal evidence from the, from the trenches is somewhere in the range of 10 to 20 sets per muscle group per week. And those are very variable. I mean, some people can do well with lower volumes and some people need to be on the higher end.

Brad then explained how higher volumes could be strategically used to grow stubborn muscle groups.

There may be a benefit to specialization cycles. Let's say your chest might be somewhat needy, you might do 20 sets for that. But other muscle groups may, may be only getting five sets if they're more well developed. And that way you can think on an individual level and research is never going to tell you that.

Now, as for beginners who haven't grown much overall muscle in the first place.

If you're a ranked beginner, I think all of this goes out the window. Like to me, you should not be focusing on volume for hypertrophy. First several months should just be focused on learning your movement patterns and very basic type routines.

So we know roughly how much volume we should be doing. But how often should we train each muscle to maximize growth?

Contrary to what I had thought, data doesn't seem to show that training a muscle more than once a week has better growth effects, with the caveat that it's generally in studies that are fairly modest volumes. So somewhere 8 to 10 sets per muscle or less per week, when you start getting over that amount, there does seem to be a modest benefit. So let's say you're going to do 16 sets of your chest on Monday because Monday's National Chest Day. So instead of doing your 16 sets, you're probably better off spreading it out, let's say doing eight sets on Monday and eight sets on Thursday.

But what workout split should you use to accomplish this?

I think a very basic one, which is a good starting point, is a upper lower split that again can be customized where you could do upper lower, and then maybe you throw in a total body workout on one day if you want to get more volume in.

So here's what Brad's upper lower split could look like using the exercises Dr. Mike recommended. I'll give you guys a link to download this routine at the end of the video. But how heavy should you lift and what rep range should you use? This is where our next expert comes in, Daniel Plotkin. Daniel is actually a former student of Brad Schoenfeld and a brilliant researcher for us over at Built with Science. Here's what he had to say.

So, interestingly, a wide variety of rep ranges can get you similar amounts of hypertrophy. But practically speaking, if you go too heavy, then you'll likely need to do more sets and, and it might come with a little bit more joint wear and tear. And on the other side of the spectrum, if you go too light, then it's harder to gauge proximity to failure and probably harder to take sets to or close to failure, particularly on compound movements. So the sweet spot is likely going to be for most exercises and most people between 5 and 15 reps, which is usually a moderate load.

However, if you're following a proper diet, you should be able to get stronger week after week. And to keep your muscles growing, you need to continue challenging them. But what's the most effective approach to do that? Add in a bit more weight compared to your last workout, or on the other hand, trying to do more reps? Luckily for us, Daniel was the lead author on a recent study that looked at just that.

We ran a study to try to see whether increasing reps or increasing in load was better for hypertrophy. So we tested their strength and we had one group only progress in load, while the other group only progressed in reps. And the reps group started at an average of about 10 reps per set and ended the study at about 15 to 20 reps per set, depending on the exercise. And we found that there were pretty much no differences between groups in terms of how much hypertrophy they gained.

So to actually apply Daniel's research, stick to a rep range of around 8 to 12 reps on most of your exercises. Then during each set, apply a technique called double progression. This is where you focus on increasing your reps before adding more weight. For example, if you can do eight reps with a certain amount of weight, aim to do more reps with that same weight the following week. Only once you can comfortably do 12 reps should you then consider adding a small amount of weight and continuing the process. So you now have a way of forcing your muscles to grow every workout. But how hard should you train? Some people believe that you should take every single set to all out failure, the point where muscles can no longer lift the weight. Whereas others believe the style of training is just too much for your muscles to recover from. Who's right? This is where our next expert comes in. Josh. Josh and his colleague Zach from Data Driven Strength recently ran a massive analysis to determine if you actually experience more growth the closer to failure you train. They found that on average, if you stop your sets about five reps short of failure, you'd achieve about 75% of max gains from that point. For every rep you get closer to complete failure, you get about 5% more relative growth. However, Josh cautioned that although training to failure may lead to more growth, when you look at just one set in isolation, it also creates more fatigue. So if you start training to failure during all your workouts and end up not being able to recover from it, it may not actually lead to more growth.

You have to train hard. There's really no way of getting around that. But then you can get into the weeds a little bit and say, going to do, you know, maybe more sets and training a little bit further from failure. Am I going to do less sets? And train all the way to failure? Or am I going to do both? Right? What can I recover from? What do I seem to benefit from? And where do I kind of get those indications that progress is moving in the right direction?

But here's what Josh recommends to start out with.

If you're a beginner, it's your first few weeks of training and probably what's going to matter more is good, safe technique. But then, hey, as you become, you know, more comfortable with that exercise, train two to three reps in reserve for all your sets. Except for the last set, just take it all the way to failure. And if you get 10 more reps in the previous sets, okay, now I know that for the next time I do that exercise. And okay, maybe if you're doing, you know, back squat, you don't necessarily want to go all the way to failure, but make dang sure that you know you're pushing your limits.

And one final note I'd like to make is that their analysis used an average volume of 10 direct sets per muscle per week. So it's relatively unclear as to how exactly the benefit of training the failure changes for higher volume routines. But Josh does have an exciting analysis in the works.

On this flash drive right here, I have about 400 ultrasound scans I need to analyze at some point. We compared basically a higher volume condition with three reps in reserve. And then the other arm of each individual looked at lower set volumes all the way to momentary failure. I'm excited about these projects, not necessarily because they're going to save the world independently, but maybe can give some insight into like we have this range of motion research, we have the frequency research of the volume research, how the hell to put it all together because it is, it is tricky.

I'm honestly really excited to see the results from Josh. And I'm curious, what do you guys think will come out on top? And why higher volume but training further away from failure or lower volume and training all the way to failure? Comment your answer below and I'll keep you guys updated with the result. So far we have an excellent foundation that's going to drive the vast majority of your results. But for the icing on the cake, there is one new growth hack that's been consistently shown to provide between 5 to 15% faster growth. Here to explain this is the world's most knowledgeable expert within this field of research, Dr. Milo Wolf.

We now have around five studies looking at partial range of motion at lower muscle lengths or lengthened partials versus full range of motion. We Call it a lengthened partial because you're training in the lengthened part of the range of motion and you're doing a partial range of motion about half the full rep. Across these five studies, four found more muscle growth when using lengthened partials versus four range of motion. And one has found no difference.

Now, as for the best way to start applying this research to your training, here's what Milo recommends.

So I think the single best way to do it would be instead of doing a full range of motion on a given exercise, try using about 50% or about half reps in that lengthen position. That's typically what we've studied in the research. There are other ways, like for example, doing a full range of motion set, but extending it by doing partials at the end of the set when you can't get another full rep and end the set.

As for what exercises to apply this to Avoid using this on exercises where it's unsafe to go to failure. Your best options are instead lateral raises, bicep curls, tricep pushdowns, most back exercises, and chest flies. But as for how often to use this technique, here's what Milo recommends.

That's a good question. The honest answer is we don't fully know the evidence, simply hasn't looked at whole programs. Personally, in my own training I use exclusively lengthened partials. And I think if someone wanted to optimize their growth and came to me and was like, I just want the most muscle growth. I care about nothing else. I don't have any strength goals or anything, I would say use at least 50% of your training with lengthened partials.

So basically take a look at your routine and see what exercises this technique could work well with. Perform about 50% of those sets with either lengthened partials instead of full range of motion reps, or with length of partials done after your normal set. But what about beginners? Should they use this technique as well?

I think people who have never lifted weights before to provide them with a frame of reference for what a partial should actually look like. Teaching them a full range of motion first is good, but I think after a few weeks of them knowing how to do a full range of motion, that they're essentially good to go as far as, like partials go. And in fact, as much as scientists don't like to say it, most of these studies are done in relatively untrained populations. So that is where it's most likely to have a big effect.

We've covered a lot so far and honestly, I was considering just stopping the research right here and ending the video. But I couldn't do that to you guys. As important as your training is, your nutrition is actually what's going to deliver most of your results. So I called out two more experts to now focus on diet. First up, we have pro bodybuilder and scientist Dr. Eric Helms. Eric began by explaining that while eating more calories than your body needs is often recommended for growth, it may not always be the right approach.

If you are someone who is starting relatively high in body fat, you're probably not going to want to be in a calorie surplus. Beginner who's relatively high in body fat will probably be able to maximize muscle growth at maintenance or even potentially in a small deficit, while there are some limits to that.

So a calorie surplus seems to make the most sense for those who are relatively lean. But just how large should that calorie surplus be?

So Rosnik and colleagues actually reported nearly exclusive lean mass gains on average in a group of untrained young male participants who started resistance training is they just gave them a roughly 2000 calorie weight gainer on top of their habitual diet. They gained roughly three kilograms of body mass in eight weeks. So we're talking about basically gaining a pound a week of nearly entirely lean mass gains. When you're young, completely naive to resistance training and you first start, there is an argument for having a large surplus. Unfortunately though, Jeremy, is that it seems like after that, you know, first maybe one or two big bulks that you have, you can't really go back to the well, because we've seen in multiple other studies on well trained individuals that larger surpluses predominantly result in larger gains in fat mass. And most recently our group here, we just published at the end of 2023 and unfortunately we found roughly the same thing.

Now as for what this looks like in terms of how fast you should be gaining weight every month, here's what Eric recommends.

I think basically you want to scale your rate of weight gain to your, your experience level. So if you're a ranked novice, I think gaining 2% of your body weight per month, which would roughly track with that 300 to 500 calorie surplus is a good idea. And then if you're say an intermediate, probably something closer to 1% of your body weight per month is a decent target, that's probably going to be between a 200 to 300 calorie surplus. And then if you are advanced, we're probably talking a 100 to 200 calorie surplus at most and gaining like 0.5 to 1% of their body weight per month.

Now, to help you guys figure out exactly how many calories you need, I've implemented all of this research with Eric's recommendations into a simple calculator you can use over@builtwithscience.com calculator which I'll also link below. But what's just as important as your calorie intake is your protein intake. This is where our final expert comes in. Alan Erridar Allen is one of the world's top nutrition researchers with over 30 years of success in the field. He'll first explain how much protein we really need and then he'll provide a list of the best protein sources to maximize growth.

You have total daily protein intake, 1.6 to 2.2 grams per kilogram of body weight, or 0.7 to 1.0 grams per pound. If you can hit that by the end of the day, you've done 90, 95% of what you can possibly do to maximize your gains. But we do have a study by Yasuda and colleagues who compared a low amount of protein at one of the meals, a moderate amount, and then a large amount of protein at the meals versus an even distribution of protein. And so what they saw was the evenly distributed group had more muscle size and strength gains than the skewed distribution group. If we want to optimize muscle growth of first importance, get total daily protein straight, that's the cake. Now the icing on the cake, spread it out relatively evenly over, I would say a minimum of three protein doses over the course of the day.

Now as for the best protein sources to hit your daily target, get a.

Mix of protein sources in the diet through the day or through the week. So you have your flesh foods, you have beef, fish, poultry, and then you've got dairy, Greek yogurt to, you know, milk itself to whey protein. Then you've got the legume based proteins or bean based proteins for the, for the plant based side. It's also worth mentioning, Jeremy, that cholesterol, dietary cholesterol is a really potent precursor to testosterone production. This was a study, semi recent study that Bagheri and colleagues did where they tested three whole eggs post exercise with the equivalent protein equivalent, roughly six egg whites post exercise. And they ran the experiment, I believe it was for 12 weeks, and they found that the whole eggs group had superior changes in body composition. But the interesting part about this study is that the whole egg group's testosterone levels increased by 239 nanograms per deciliter. And so that is a a freaking huge increase in testosterone just from eating.

Whole, you know, three whole eggs.

Unfortunately they didn't report the baseline testosterone level so we don't know whether that was like people going from lowish to kind of moderate or whether it was going from moderate to like you know, the Micah level. So yeah, there is a good handful of literature showing three eggs a day essentially is doesn't do anything concerning. I love eggs. They're one of the greatest protein sources in nature. My blood lipids are fine and I, I enjoy the, the testosterone.

I was just gonna say that. Guys, I've made over 260 science based videos but this one is by far the one I poured the most effort into. And I did that not just because I'm a nerd who loves research, but because I want to bring you guys trustworthy science back fitness information that I honestly wish I had during my early years of training. So if you found it useful, please let me know in the comments below and share the video with anyone you think of my benefit. Or at least take a screenshot of the main points for them. And of course massive shout out to all the experts who made this video possible. I've looked up to many of them for years, so being able to speak one on one with them and share their knowledge with you guys is just an incredible honor. Highly recommend giving them a follow and I'll put links to all their social media down below and I'll also leave a link to where you can Download the full 4 day upper lower workout routine that we created earlier on in this video. Highly recommend giving this video Watch next where I again talk to a group of scientists but this time about the best way to lose that stubborn belly fat. And if you're someone who needs more guidance and just wants a step by step plan that takes care of all the guesswork for you, you can take our quiz over@builtwithscience.com to find the best program for you. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you next time.