The Smartest Way to Build Muscle, From 7 Top Scientists
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Published 2024-01-21
DOWNLOAD THE UPPER LOWER WORKOUT ROUTINE:
builtwithscience.com/upperlower
LINK TO CALORIE CALCULATOR:
builtwithscience.com/calculator
MUSCLE BUILDING EXPERTS:
Dr. Mike Israetel: www.instagram.com/drmikeisraetel/
Dr. Brad Schoenfeld: www.instagram.com/bradschoenfeldphd/
Daniel Plotkin: www.instagram.com/danielplotkin/
Josh Pelland: www.instagram.com/josh.datadrivenstrength/
Dr. Milo Wolf: www.instagram.com/wolfcoach_/
Dr. Eric Helms: www.instagram.com/helms3dmj/
Alan Aragon: www.instagram.com/thealanaragon/
Click below for a step by step science-based fitness plan that takes care of all the guess work for you:
quiz.builtwithscience.com/
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So, when it comes to how to build muscle, the first piece of the puzzle is exercise selection. Dr. Mike Israetel provided his insight. He says the number of exercises to build muscle you should have in your plan for muscle growth is something like 2 to 4 per muscle. He also emphasizes that you shouldn’t change exercises every week. Instead, you should only switch things up if your exercise is hurting your joints, it's boring you, et cetera, and there are other good candidates around.
Dr. Brad Schoenfeld then came in to explain volume and frequency. On the number of sets needed to optimize hypertrophy: it’s somewhere in the range of 10-20 sets per muscle group weekly. However, there may be a benefit to specialization cycles where high volumes can be beneficial for a given muscle group. Beginners should not be focusing on volume for hypertrophy. The first several months should just be focused on learning your movement patterns and very basic type routines. There does seem to be a modest hypertrophy benefit in training a muscle more than once a week when you exceed 8 to 10 sets per muscle or more per week. Brad recommends an upper lower split.
As for how heavy you should lift and the rep range you should use to build muscle, Daniel Plotkin says that for most people, between 5 and 15 reps, which is usually a moderate load. Then, during each set, apply a progressive overload technique called double progression. This is where you focus on increasing your reps before adding more weight. For example, if you can do 8 reps with a certain amount of weight, aim to do more reps with that same weight the following week. Keep going until you get to 12 reps per set, which is when you should you consider adding a small amount of weight, continuing the process.
And on whether training to failure is truly the best way to gain muscle, Josh says although training to failure may lead to more growth when you look at just 1 set in isolation, it also creates more fatigue. That’s why he recommends training 2 to 3 reps in reserve for all your sets except for the last set, where you'd just take it all the way to failure.
Dr. Milo Wolf then shares a hypertrophy hack: lengthened partials, which seem to produce more, or at the very least, the same amount of hypertrophy than a full range of motion. He recommends instead of doing a full range of motion on a given exercise, try using about 50% or about half reps in that lengthened position.
Now, it’s time to learn more about the other half of the how to build muscle equation, nutrition. Dr. Eric Helms explains calorie intake. Basically, you want to scale your calorie surplus and your rate of weight gain to your experience level. So if you're a beginner, 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 an intermediate, probably something closer to 1% of your body weight per month is a decent target. That's probably gonna be between the 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.
Finally, Alan Aragon explains protein intake. Here’s what he says: of first importance, get total daily protein straight, which is 0.7 to 1.0 g/lb bodyweight, that's the cake. For the icing on the cake, spread it out relatively evenly over a minimum of 3 protein doses over the course of the day. As for the best protein sources, Alan recommends getting a mix of protein sources throughout the day.
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - The 7 Scientists
0:55 - Best Exercises
6:04 - Best Workout Splits
8:33 - How Heavy to Lift
10:40 - How Hard to Train
13:33 - New Growth Hack
16:06 - Nutrition (CALORIES)
18:56 - Nutrition (PROTEIN)
22:19 - Full Workout Routine
All Comments (21)
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This was a huge undertaking for me but I wanted you guys to have an all-in-one guide you could go to for everything you need to know about building muscle. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful! Share it with whomever you think it would help out. And here's a link to the upper/lower routine we filled out in the video: builtwithscience.com/upperlower . Cheers!
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Great content.
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I think this could be THE BEST video in the entire fitness industry, with all these experts' knowledge and studies they did. Respect.
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I’m a physician and found your video the best (science backed) I have seen on the internet regarding muscle growth and exercise physiology. And having done medical research in the past, I appreciated the hard work and diligence you put into it. Great work!
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It's hard to grasp how immensely valuable this content actually is. Thank you for making it openly available Jeremy.
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You really outdid yourself with this one Jeremy. You actually covered all the bases, I'm gonna keep this as a guide and show it to anyone who wants to get into fitness. Keep it up 💪
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This is it, the only video anyone trying to gain muscle mass needs to watch to get the gist in terms of strategy. Well done man!
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What such honor to have you covering this mate. Great work.
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The best summary for people who are trying to get in shape. Lots of pearls condense in only a couple of minutes. Well done.
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honestly, i cant believe a video like this is out here for free. not only is this really high quality, in-depth, and organized—but its extremely digestible for all experience levels looking for answers. you are a treasure Jeremy 🙏
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This channel has always been great, but you've topped yourself here! Very informative and straightforward and practical.
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This is such a helpful video. The fact you took all the information and made it available in a PDF and Google Sheet for free is admirable. Thank you, you’re appreciated.
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After watching this, my lean muscle mass tripled
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This video is literally everything people need to hear all in one video. Thank you Jeremy all your videos have helped me out!!
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This is truly valuable content for me as an intermediate and goes straight into my fitness playlist. I mean, this hits all the important points in one video that`s not too long. Thank you very much for the value that you provide !
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Most comprehensive video I've seen. So much actionable information condensed in less than 24 minutes! Don't skip any second!
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Dr. Mike is great. “What kind of channel are you running, followers with no calves!?” lol
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I know how arduous it is to coordinate all of these interviews and decide which questions to ask in order to garner the most pertinent information. Big ups to you, Jeremy. The knowledge you’ve extracted and compiled for us is invaluable. Thank you very, very much.
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Hi Jeremy. I just wanted to say this is by far the most complete fitness video I've seen over here in my life, and I've been watching this sort of videos for ages. Congratulations man, this is really golden information for us mortals out there. Keep the good work and greetings from Spain 👊🏽💪🏾😜
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This is undoubtedly the best video on training for hypertrophy EVER. I've been watching content about this for a year now, only science based videos, and I can't remember a bit of important information that was forgotten here.
