Building Muscle: Strength, Hypertrophy, & Endurance
It is an odd transition from my last post: making summer cocktails right into building muscle. But this year is bringing with it a number of new adventures for me, and with it a need for solid fitness programming. So here goes.
In a month, I’ll be leaving for Kansas City to “compete” (read: slowly participate) in a 340-mile, multi-day kayak race known as the MR340. In late August, I’ll be in the hills of West Virginia tackling my second Spartan Race, a 21k Beast. Then in October, I am venturing into and hiking through the Utah Rockies for an elk hunt – my first hunt of any kind. There is a chance I’ll be squeezing in my first marathon in there, too: a trail run with over 4,400 feet of elevation.
Safe to say I have a physically demanding few months ahead of me. In the meantime, I’m working out and dieting diligently to prepare.
At the top of the list of demands like flexibility, balance, and cardiovascular endurance sits all things muscle: a combination of strength, hypertrophy, and endurance. I’ll cover my plans for flexibility (long way to go on that) and cardio endurance soon, but I’ll start here with what I’m doing to prepare my muscles. For reference, I pulled most of these practices from several Huberman Lab podcast episodes, as well as bits and pieces from The Drive podcasts with Peter Attia. I then distilled them into something that can work for me (i.e., perhaps not optimal, but sufficient for a 32-year-old father of two that just does this stuff for kicks).
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Some Definitions
I’m sure fitness gurus would take me to task for the simplicity of my definitions, but it is worth clarifying what I mean by “strength,” “hypertrophy,” and “muscular endurance.” That is why I lump them all into the category of “building muscle.”
By strength, I am referring to the ability to move heavier and heavier amounts of weight around over time. Today, I can bench press around 265 lb for three repetitions. If I upped that to 300 lb, that is an increase in strength.
Hypertrophy, on the other hand, is simply the growth in size of the muscle; hypertrophy is literally building muscle. It is possible to grow muscle size without adding significant strength. For example, by adding volume (more reps) instead of weight to your sets you can build muscle but barely be able to lift heavier weights. Muscle size matters for a reason I’ll get to in a minute.
Muscular endurance, as I view it, is the ability to move weight over a long period of time. Like hypertrophy, this can be accomplished with high-rep resistance training.
The Basics
Strength training is mostly a matter of performing low-rep, high-weight resistance exercises. Think somewhere on the order of three to five sets of five or fewer reps per workout. You could hypothetically do this for any muscle group, but isolating some muscles will have limited utility.
Consider five sets of three bicep curls. Add weight as you progress, and your biceps will get stronger over time. But what does that accomplish? Probably not much because having biceps capable of moving heavier loads isn’t all that useful for most people. Besides, anything “heavy” for a bicep curl is inherently a lot to put on a single joint (in this case, the elbow).
Now consider the same for deadlifts. This is a compound movement that engages nearly every important muscle group in some capacity: your legs, lower back, and traps, among others. If you can increase your deadlift, carrying a couch or a mattress up the stairs suddenly becomes easier. There is practical utility.
For strength, you could hypothetically train everyday because the volume is so low. But that doesn’t suit other needs or my schedule, so I do it far less frequently.
Hypertrophy and muscular endurance, on the other hand, require high volume but adequate rest time between workouts to allow for muscle protein synthesis to occur. You can think of this essentially as the process by which protein (amino acids) construct muscle. Obviously important if the goal is building muscle.
The hypertrophy protocol I’ve built my workout on (and strength protocol, for that matter), comes from the Huberman Lab episode with Dr. Andy Galpin, who serves as Director of the Center for Sport Performance at Cal State, Fullerton.
For hypertrophy, the range is something more like eight to 30 reps for a minimum of 10 sets per week. The key is to go to, or nearly to, failure on your reps. That is why, over time, you may need to up the weight; if you are blazing past 30 reps at 20 lb, it is probably time to get back down to 10 reps at 25 lb instead.
I view my hypertrophy training and muscular endurance training as very similar in terms of high-rep and low-weight. That said, my endurance work right now consists of many more repetitions in the form of a rowing machine.
Let’s jump into my workouts.
My Resistance Training Schedule
Monday – Strength & Hypertrophy
After warming up, I get into my strength sets. Again, my strength training consists of compound movements with significant utility, working many big muscle groups at once:
Squats: 3 sets of 3 reps with heavy weight
Bench press: 3 sets of 3 reps with heavy weight
Barbell rows: 3 sets of 3 reps with heavy weight
Then I do two hypertrophy supersets. Since these are higher volume but lower weight, I go full-body and isolate smaller muscle groups to ensure I’m packing on lean muscle everywhere:
10+ goblet squats
10+ dumbbell bench flyes
10+ reverse flyes
10+ delt flyes
10+ tricep extensions
10+ bicep curls
10+ forearm curls
10+ calf raises
Max bicycle crunches
Max duration plank
Max kettlebell swings
From a strength perspective, I’ve done low-rep, high-weights for a few sets. For hypertrophy, I’ve only done two of my weekly high-rep sets, but I also consider my strength training sets as adding to my hypertrophy work to some degree. That is because it counts as additional exercise volume, even if in a sub-optimal rep range.
One day in, I’d say I’m something like four sets into my 10+ hypertrophy sets for the week.
Tuesday – Muscular Endurance
On Tuesdays I hit the rowing machine and will continue to do so until after my kayak race.
Tuesdays I usually do a brief, HIIT-style (high intensity interval training) row of 15 to 20 minutes. I’ll row slowly at a moderate or light resistance for one minute, then ratchet the resistance up and go hard and fast for a minute.
It is that simple: one minute hard, one minute easy, for a brief and explosive workout.
Wednesday – Hypertrophy
My once-a-week hypertrophy day consists of four or five supersets (depending on my schedule) of full-body work. I do like to mix up my exercises a bit so these differ from my Monday and Friday hypertrophy supersets.
Besides exercise type, the only difference is that I add a chest exercise (to hit both upper and lower) and I focus my core work on obliques.
10+ goblet squats
10+ incline bench
10+ dips (w/ forward lean to hit lower chest)
Max pull ups
10+ upright rows (w/ kettlebell)
10+ dips
10+ wide grip bicep curls
10+ forearm curls
10+ outward calf raises
Max oblique curls
Max Russian twists
Max kettlebell swings
Thursday – Muscular Endurance
On Thursdays, I’m back to the rowing machine. This time instead of a hard, fast HIIT row, I’ll go slow and steady.
This is typically about 30-45 minutes of solid rowing on a high resistance. Usually I’ll change my grip on the bar every five minutes or so just to emphasize and target different regions of my back.
I get a lot more rowing reps during these sessions than on my Tuesday workouts.
Friday – Strength & Hypertrophy
Fridays look a lot like Mondays and once again emphasize strength training. The only difference is that I switch out bench press for shoulder press and barbell rows for deadlifts.
Squats: 3 sets of 3 reps with heavy weight
Shoulder press: 3 sets of 3 reps with heavy weight
Deadlift: 3 sets of 3 reps with heavy weight
Then, as with Mondays, I do two hypertrophy supersets of the same exercises:
10+ goblet squats
10+ dumbbell bench flyes
10+ reverse flyes
10+ delt flyes
10+ tricep extensions
10+ bicep curls
10+ forearm curls
10+ calf raises
Max bicycle crunches
Max duration plank
Max kettlebell swings
By the end of the week, I’ve done six heavy sets of squats and three heavy sets of other “big lifts.” I’ve done a minimum of eight additional hypertrophy-driven sets. And I’ve done two ultra-high rep muscular endurance workouts in the form of rowing.
On the weekends, I’ll either rest or get non-resistance work in, such as a run or a ruck. To be clear, I’m also incorporating brief yoga and HIIT cycling rides into my morning routine. But that is a post for another time.
My anticipation is that by working in a variety of rep ranges and sets into my program, building muscle will happen rather naturally. Stay tuned.
How do you go about building muscle? Any other exercises you’d suggest incorporating? Send me your thoughts at michael@theothermichaeljordan.com. I hope to hear from you.
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