Building Muscle Mass: A simple guide

Building muscle size, or hypertrophy, isn’t just about lifting heavy weights or spending hours in the gym. While those things are certainly important, muscle growth comes down to understanding a few key principles. These principles include how many sets per week you should do, how to optimize time under tension, and how to effectively recruit motor units. In this post, we’ll break down these concepts and explain them in simple terms, so you can make the most of your workouts and build the muscle mass you’re aiming for. 

1. How Many Sets Per Week? 

When it comes to hypertrophy, the volume of your training—essentially, how much work you’re doing—is one of the most important factors. The number of sets you do per week plays a major role in muscle growth. Generally speaking, aiming for 10-20 good quality sets per muscle group per week strikes a sweet spot for most people. However, this can vary based on factors like your training experience, recovery ability, and goals. 

• Beginners: If you're newer to resistance training, around 10-12 sets per muscle group per week is a great starting point. This will allow your body to adapt to the demands of resistance training without overloading your system.  
  

• Intermediate Lifters: Once you've been training consistently for a year or two, you may want to increase the volume to around 15-20 sets per muscle group per week. This increased volume helps to further challenge your muscles and stimulate growth. 
  

The key is to spread these sets out across the week—doing too many sets in a single session can lead to fatigue and poor performance. For example, training a muscle group 2 times per week with 6-8 sets per session allows for adequate recovery between workouts while still providing enough stimulus for growth. 

2. Time Under Tension (TUT) 

Time under tension refers to how long a muscle is under load during an exercise. The longer a muscle is working, the more stress it experiences, and the more it has to adapt and grow. This is why controlling the tempo of your lifts is so important when you’re looking to maximize hypertrophy. 

A common recommendation is to slow down your reps and focus on both the lifting (concentric) and lowering (eccentric) phases of each movement. For example:  

• Eccentric (Lowering) Phase: Aim for a 3-second descent. Lowering the weight slowly increases the time the muscle spends under tension, which can help increase muscle fiber recruitment.  
  

• Concentric (Lifting) Phase: Aim for a 1-second lift. This is the phase where you contract the muscle, and it should be explosive but controlled.  
  

• Pause at the Top/Bottom: Adding a short pause at the top or bottom of the movement (1-2 seconds) further challenges the muscle and helps prevent the use of momentum. 
  

By slowing down the tempo and focusing on time under tension, you place more strain on the muscle fibers, which is essential for stimulating hypertrophy. This approach can be applied to both compound movements (like squats and bench press) and isolation exercises (like bicep curls and leg extensions). 

3. Motor Unit Recruitment 

Motor units are groups of muscle fibers that are activated by a single motor neuron (The nerves that run from our spinal cord). To build muscle, it’s crucial to recruit as many motor units as possible during your workout. The more motor units you can activate, the more muscle fibers are recruited, leading to greater hypertrophy.  

Strategies to improve motor unit recruitment include: 

• Progressive Overload: To recruit more motor units, you need to challenge your muscles progressively. This can be done by increasing the weight, the number of reps, or the sets you perform over time. The idea is to keep your muscles under a constant state of progression so that they continue to adapt and grow.  
  

• Heavy Loads vs. Volume: While lifting heavy weights recruits more motor units, it's also important to mix in light-to-moderate weights with higher volume. This combination of heavy lifting and higher volume training ensures that you’re targeting different types of muscle fibers and maximizing overall recruitment.  
  

The Importance of Recovery 

While training is crucial for muscle growth, recovery is equally important. After you stimulate your muscles in the gym, they need time to repair and grow. This recovery period involves adequate rest, nutrition, and sleep. If you train too frequently or don’t give your muscles enough time to recover, you risk overtraining and potentially stalling your progress. 

• Sleep is one of the most important factors in muscle recovery. Aim for 7-9 hours of quality sleep per night to allow your body to repair and grow.  
  

• Nutrition plays a vital role in recovery too. Make sure you’re getting enough protein to support muscle repair, as well as a good balance of carbs and fats to fuel your workouts and promote recovery. 

Conclusion 

Improving muscle size and hypertrophy is a combination of the right volume, intensity, tempo, and recovery. To build muscle effectively: 

• Perform 10-20 sets per muscle group per week to ensure you’re providing enough stimulus for growth. 

• Focus on time under tension by controlling the tempo of your lifts, especially during the eccentric phase. 

• Aim to recruit more motor units by progressively overloading your muscles and focusing on the mind-muscle connection. 
  

And, of course, don’t forget that recovery is just as important as the workout itself. Consistent training, proper recovery, and good nutrition will help you maximize your muscle-building potential and make steady progress over time. Stay patient, stay consistent, and the results will come!