How Many Exercises Do You Need To Maximize Muscle Growth?

When it comes to exercise selection, generally there's two extremes. On the one end are those who say all you need are the basics squats, bench and deadlifts to build an impressive physique. On the other end are those who hit each muscle with every single exercise in the book, often inspired by their favorite Instagram influencer. What approach is best to maximize growth? Well, both approaches actually do have valid reasoning behind them. For those who take a minimalistic approach, research does actually support this cap. For instance, one recent 2021 paper had one group of subjects perform just one exercise for each muscle group three times per week, whereas the other group worked each muscle group with a different exercise every workout. Total workout volume and intensity were matched in both groups and muscle growth was assessed at three sites, each on the front and side of the thigh and the biceps and triceps. After nine weeks, both groups experienced a similar amount of overall growth in each of their muscles. Now, taking these results at face value, you'd assume that doing just one exercise per muscle would be sufficient. However, when you dive into the results a little more, not only was there a slight trend towards better growth in the varied exercise group, but they also experienced growth at all 12 sites that were measured, whereas the other group that use the same exercises workout to work out failed to experience significant growth in two of the measured sites. The same effect has been found in past research as well, such as in this 2014 paper that employed a similar study design but only analyzed growth of the quads after 12 weeks. The researchers found similar overall quadriceps growth in both groups, but the subjects that varied their exercises experienced significant growth in all four heads of the quads, whereas the same exercise group failed to experience significant growth in two of the four heads. And there's a couple of reasons why exactly, exactly this happens. The first reason is due to what's known as regional hypertrophy, which is a well supported phenomenon that different exercises cause growth in different regions of a muscle. For example, squats will grow certain parts of your quads well that leg presses just don't grow as well and vice versa. And we see this effect occur because for most of our individual muscles, some fibers of that muscle will activate very well in certain exercises and ranges of motion, yet not as much in others. For example, certain biceps exercises will favor growth in the inner portion or short head of your biceps, whereas other biceps exercises will favor growth in the outer portion or long head of your biceps. Now, although it's currently not crystal clear as to what specific exercises will favor specific regions of a muscle. This phenomenon does exist and does support the idea of using multiple exercises to maximally stimulate and grow a muscle in a proportionate manner. The second reason is due to the various biomechanical actions that each of our muscles have. For example, the chest functions to primarily bring our arms together during a bench press. We do this with heavy weight, but we fail to work the chest through its full range of motion, whereas with a fly we can bring the arms together and further back and will help activate specific motor units and parts of the chest that the bench press likely would not. Similarly, again looking at the chest, we can divide the chest into its upper, middle and lower fibers, which can each be emphasized with different movements. So if we were only to train the chest with something like the bench press, which tends to favor growth in the mid and lower regions of the chest, then is shown in a 2020 paper that tested just that, your upper chest would likely end up lagging behind. Another good example are the hamstrings, which have two main functions to flex the knee and extend the hip. So if you were to leave all of your hamstrings training to deadlifts or which primarily work the hamstrings by extending the hips, then you'd be missing out on one of the major functions of that muscle. Whereas adding in a knee flexion movement like leg curls or a glute ham raise would ensure that the main functions of the hamstrings are utilized and that all parts of the muscle can be stimulated and grown to the greatest extent. Aside from just overall growth though, another benefit of varying your exercises is that it helps minimize wear and tear and your risk of overuse injuries. If you do all of your volume for a muscle group with just one or two exercises without ever rotating them, then you're stressing the same joints and same stabilizer muscles to the same stress all the time, which can eventually cause irritation and overuse injuries. For example, if you did bench press three times a week indefinitely, then for many people their elbows or shoulders will eventually start experiencing some discomfort. Whereas if you added in a more elbow and shoulder friendly dumbbell press to one of the days in between you, you'd still be able to provide growth to your chest, but with less risk of overuse injuries and discomfort in your joints. Now, with all that being said, some people will take what I've just mentioned and over apply it into their training routines by hammering each muscle group with six or even seven exercises every workout. While I will admit this can be satisfying to do, it often does more harm than good. Yes, our muscles do need some variety and novel stimulus over time to keep our muscles growing. But. But if you're using every single exercise in the book for a specific muscle group right from the start, then you're already exposing that muscle to all of the best tricks up your sleeve for when your growth plateaus. Meaning that once your muscles get used to what you're currently doing, you'll have no leftover exercises to introduce it to in order to potentially stimulate more growth. So instead, a much more effective option is to pick about two to four exercises for each of your muscle groups that work very well for you and cover a good variety of movement patterns. Then simply distribute these throughout the week as needed and feel free to repeat some of these exercises on multiple days if needed. But at the same time, you want to limit the number of exercises that you use per muscle in each workout to three or four at most. Otherwise, the additional exercises and work that you do for that muscle in that workout will likely go towards junk volume rather than actually provide an effective stimulus for growth. So for example, with four exercises per week for chest, here's how you could intelligently distribute them into two workouts per week with something like a push, pull, leg split. Then after that setup, you simply throw in however many sets that you need for each exercise in order to meet your weekly volume targets, which for most people will be somewhere between 1020 sets per muscle per week. And even if you're not hitting every angle, head or movement pattern for a given muscle in your weekly routine, don't worry about it too much. Because once that initial routine you're using becomes stale and you need some variety is when you can swap in certain exercises and accommodate for whatever movement patterns that you might have been missing out on in your previous routine. So as a summary, here is a step by step plan for how you can apply everything we just covered. If you're serious about designing your own program, then I'd highly suggest that you take the time to go through this step by step process, because it's the little details like this that make all the difference if you want to maximize your efforts and results. And for those who are looking for a step by step program that takes care of all of the guesswork for you and optimizes your weekly training and nutrition program based on science so that you can truly transform your body as efficiently as possible. And simply head on over to billed science.com and take our analysis quiz to discover which of our systematic approaches is best for you and your specific body. Anyways, that is it for today guys. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this one. Please don't forget to show your support by giving the video a like leaving a comment down below as to what you'd like to see me cover next subscribe to the channel. And please don't forget to turn on notifications as well as this really does help me out. Thank you so much everyone and see you next time.