Maximizing Muscle Gains: Insights from Top Muscle Building Scientists

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 cuz 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 failure the

whole egg groups testosterone levels increased by 239 nanog per deil that is a freaking huge increase in testosterone

using their research I'll 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 isrel 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 four now was for what's specific exercises to do for each muscle here's

Dr mice recommendations all right where are we starting calves bottom up oh I was going to say chest um chest

broke unbelievable chest some kind of flat barbell or dumbbell pressing is a good idea and then some incline work and

then lastly for chest I would say uh 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 store biceps for biceps I would say doing bicep curls from a stretched position of biceps is a

good idea whether it's cable basian 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 push Downs are a perfect exercise here and the third thing I would suggest be some kind of

compound pressing work shoulders I'd say see 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 dels 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 hamstring glutes

Cals did you forget about Cales what the hell kind of channel are you running here caless followers

running around let's get calvs over with I would say doing your calf raises with a straight leg more often than with a

bent leg pre-stretches the gastrus muscle and thus also makes it grow much much more impressively than with bent

leg calves you have to have a big ass stretch the biggest stretch you can have hold for 2 to 4 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 ha squats properly done leg extensions all right hamstrings uh some kind of hip hinges I like stiff leg a

deadlifts with a regular barbell you can do them um Bells too and then I would say um 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 it that for every hot girl there's a guy that's tired of dealing with her so uh 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 uh glutes lunges have to be the core some kind of lunging and

it doesn't matter much what kind but front fo out of front foot elevated and weight Focus 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 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 Etc 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 you go which one do I want to use uh

I'll try that one 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 schenfeld 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 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 maybe only getting five sets if they're more welldeveloped and that way you 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 uh 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 St

so instead of doing your 16 sets you're bet 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 a very basic one which is a

good starting point is a upper lower split uh that again can be customized where you could do upper lower and then

maybe you throw in a total body work out 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 ring should you use this is where our next expert comes

in Daniel plin Daniel is actually a former student of Brad shenfeld 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 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 adding 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 in 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

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 add in 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 trade some people believe that you should take every single set to All Out failure the point where your 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 straight

recently ran a massive analysis to determine if you actually experience more growth the closer to failure you

train they found that on average AP stoer 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 um you know maybe more sets and and

train 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 um and 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 probably what's going to matter more is 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 make dang sure that you know you're pushing your limits and one final

note I'd like to make is that their analysis use an average volume of 10 direct sets per muscle per week so it's

relatively unclear as to how exactly the benefit of training to 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 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 we have 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 weight 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 longer muscle lengths or lengthen partial versus for

range of motion we call the length and 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 length and partials versus four Ranger 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 length and position that's typically we've studied in the research there are other ways like for

example doing a 4ange motion set but extending it by doing partials at the end of the set when you can't get

another full rep and then the set as for what exercises to apply this to avoid using this on exercises worth unsafe to

go to failure your best options are instead lateral raises bicep curls tricep push Downs most back exercises

and chest flies but as for how often to use this technique here's what mil 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 length and 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 length 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 length and partials instead of

full range of motion reps or with length and 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 Ranger motion first is good but I think after a few

weeks of them knowing how to do a full Ranger motion they're essentially good to go as far as Lin partials go and in

fact as much as uh 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 [Music]

effect we've covered a lot so far and honestly I was considering just stopping the research right here in end of 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 that 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 rosik 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 roughly 2,000 calorie Weight Gainer on top of their habitual diet they gained roughly 3 Kg of of body mass

in 8 weeks so we're talking about basically gaining a pound a week of nearly entirely lean mass gains when

you're young uh completely naive to resistance training and you first start there is an argument

for having a large Surplus unfortunately though JY 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 cuz 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 rank novice I think

gaining 2% of your body weight per month which you would roughly track with that 300 to 500 calorie Surplus is a good

idea uh 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 the 200 to 300 calorie Surplus and then if you are Advanced

we're probably talking a 100 to 200 calories Surplus at at most and gaining like .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 at built with size.com

slal which I'll also link below but what's just as important as a calorie intake is your protein intake this is

where our final expert comes in Allan Aragon Allan 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 G per kilogram of body weight OR7

to 1.0 G 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 a 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 uh protein doses over the course

of the day that was 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 your beef fish

poultry um 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 a really potent precursor to testosterone production

this was a study semi- recent study that Bugari and colleagues did where they tested three whole eggs post exercise

with the equival protein equivalent roughly six egg whites post exercise and they ran the experiment I believe it was

for 12 weeks and they found that um the whole eggs group had Superior changes in body composition but um the interesting

part about this study is that the whole egg groups testosterone levels increased by

239 nanog per deciliter and so that is a freaking huge increase in testosterone just from eating whole you know three

whole eggs um 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 MN 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 they're one of the greatest protein sources in nature my blood lipids are

fine and uh I I enjoy the the testosterone I was just going to 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 Might 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 oneon-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 4day upper lower worker 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 guests work for you you can take our quiz over at builtwith science.com to

find the best program for you thank you so much for watching I'll see you next time