The Hypertrophy Hierarchy (Which Training Variables Actually Matter) | Ep 396
Get your free Strength Training for Hormone Health guide at witsandweights.com/free to learn how to structure your training to support healthy hormone levels as you age, applying the principles from this episode.
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Every week there's new advice about training. Train to failure. Don't train to failure. Do more volume. No, you're overtraining. Meanwhile, you're stuck making zero progress because nobody's telling you what actually matters.
Today, Philip ranks the 5 training variables that drive 80% of muscle growth, plus one hidden foundation that amplifies them all. Using the concept of Leverage Points from systems thinking, you'll discover which variables create disproportionate results and which ones are just noise distracting you from real progress.
This is an evidence-based blueprint to stop spinning your wheels and start building the physique you want.
Episode Resources
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Timestamps
0:00 - Why you're stuck and overwhelmed by conflicting training advice
3:18 - Variable #1: Training volume (the primary driver of muscle growth)
8:02 - Variable #2: Training effort and proximity to failure
12:54 - Variable #3: Progressive overload (the adaptation mechanism)
20:37 - Variable #4: Exercise selection and mechanical efficiency
25:14 - Variable #5: Frequency (how to distribute weekly volume)
30:05 - Bonus variable
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Philip Pape: 0:01
Every week, every day, there's new advice on social media about how to train. Train to failure, don't train to failure. Do more volume, no, you're overtraining. Meanwhile, you're stuck making zero progress because it's hard to figure out what actually matters. Today I'm ranking the five training variables that drive 80% of your muscle growth, aka hypertrophy, plus one hidden foundation that amplifies all of them. You'll learn exactly where to focus your energy so you can stop spinning your wheels in the gym and start building the physique you want. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency. I'm your host, Philip Pape, and today I'm gonna break down my hypertrophy hierarchy so you know exactly which training variables produce results and which ones are just noise. If you've felt overwhelmed by the conflicting advice about building muscle, this is one of those episodes that just cuts right through it and gives you what to focus on. As always, we are using this engineering framework to prioritize what matters. So today I'm really just jumping right into it. We're gonna start with the principles, as always, because not all training variables are equal. And by the way, when I when I talk training, I am talking about strength training, resistance training. If you're new to the podcast, you're like, what does it mean training? We're talking about resistance training, the most important thing you can do if you're not doing right now to build strength and muscle. And today we're specifically talking about hypertrophy, which is the act of building muscle size. And if you've ever heard of the Pareto principle, which is that 20% drives 80% of the results, that's kind of the mindset we're taking today, where a lot of the things you and others are doing in the gym or talking about online drive five or 10% of the results. I want to get you the 80. And we often obsess over the things that give you the five because they're easy or because they're new, they're novel, they're fun, whatever, and they don't necessarily, they're not necessarily effective. So for today's engineering concept, I'm gonna use something from systems thinking called leverage points. Someone by the name of Donnella Meadows, a systems thinker, identified that in any complex system, certain intervention points create disproportionate effects. So this is the idea of leverage. A small change at a high leverage point can produce massive results. A huge effort at a low leverage point barely moves the needle, right? And so we this is this is the epitome of efficiency that we talk about on the show. And your body is a complex system as well. And muscle growth depends on dozens of variables interacting together. And you don't necessarily have to understand all of those. You don't even have to understand the mechanisms. We really want to understand the cause and effect. And not all variables have the same leverage. So today, the hypertrophy hierarchy, hierarchy meaning a priority or pyramid of variables, right? What's most important? The hypertrophy hierarchy is going to identify five of those highest leverage points in your muscle building system where your effort produces the greatest return. And so the first variable is going to be training volume. Now, you may have heard me talk a lot about when I talk about first principles, I talk about mechanical tension, I talk about some of the mechanisms that produce muscle growth. But I'm taking a different angle today because again, I just said the mechanisms aren't as important as understanding how your actions contribute to maximizing those mechanisms. So training volume in many senses is the primary driver of muscle growth because that is the total number of hard sets per muscle group per week. And if you don't have enough volume, you're just gonna flatline no matter what you're doing. And it may be a low amount of volume compared to someone else based on your responsiveness. It's all relative. But the point is you need to hit a minimum amount of volume. So when we talk about hard sets per muscle group per week, let's define things. A hard set is going to be within about one to three reps shy of failure. You almost never have to take something to complete failure. So that's one myth we're busting right away. You almost never have to, although in some cases with small isolation movements, it can give you a little extra to go to failure or even to do, let's say, partial reps after failure in some cases. But the vast majority of movements, if in fact all, if you do them one to three reps shy of failure, you're hitting on that mechanism of mechanical tension and you're making it hard and you're getting to the point where you signal your body that it needs to adapt. If you stop a movement, let's say you have a movement on your program that says do eight to 12 reps, okay? And you get to 12 reps, and you know for a fact you could do like six more. Like it just feels kind of easy, like you could do six more. A lot of you out there, raise your hand virtually, if this is you, will stop at 12 because that's what's in the program. Or you just didn't know any better. Like it says eight to 12, so I'm gonna do 12. The point isn't to do 12, the point is to do enough to get within one to three reps shy of failure. And so if the if eight to 12 is programmed, you need to lift the weights heavy enough so that 12 is the absolute maximum number of weight of reps you could possibly do, or again within one to three reps shy of failure, meaning maybe you could do 13 or 14, maybe. And that's what a hard set is. And the research shows a clear dose response relationship with volume of these hard sets, where the more volume up to a point leads to more growth, but up to a point. So this is the this is what we're talking about here: high leverage. Okay, not the absolute minimum, but also not the absolute maximum. Where is that highest leverage point? For most muscle groups, that is going to be a pretty big range of 10 to 20 hard sets per week. And for many of you, 10 to 15 is the practical sweet spot. Practical meaning when you add up all your muscle groups and the sets and giving a seven-day week and your schedule, being busy people that you are. 10, maybe 15 is what you can fit in practically with hour to hour and a half long sessions max. If you want to go to 20, you're gonna be spending more time in the gym. That's all. But can you go down as low as five? Well, the evidence says five to 10 might be the minimum viable product when it comes to this. Meaning, yeah, you probably could still get 70, 80% of your results with five to 10 sets, but 10 to 15 is probably gonna get you 90, 95%. And then you go all to 20 and you get kind of that final optimization. Now, more isn't always better because volume comes with a cost to your recovery. Every set you do is gonna add fatigue. And this is where the minimum effective dose comes in. And you have to find that for you. So if 10 sets per week is working really well, why would you do 15 unless you want to make the trade-off with time versus optimization or fatigue versus optimization? And it's going to differ whether you're in fat loss or not, whether you're a resource-stared or not. You might have to have lower volume during fat loss. So the more stimulus is always better if your recovery can handle it. You've probably heard of concepts like stimulus to fatigue. That's what we're talking about. So I would start with 10 to 15 hard sets per muscle group per week, and then adjust upward if recovery and schedule allows. Or you can even adjust downward if that's too much, or for practical purposes, you don't have enough time in your week and you want to try that minimum, and you might surprise yourself. You might find that you needed that extra recovery. And now you can do some more walking, some more sleeping, things like that. So, variable number one was training volume. And by the way, I did an entire episode on volume, and that was episode 348, 12 rules of training volume to build more muscle. I'm gonna include that in the show notes if you want to deep dive. Variable number two is training effort. Now we have to define this again. Effort in this case is how close you take your sets to failure. Now you could use a measurement called reps in reserve, which is how many reps you have left in the tank, or the inverse of that is RPE, rate of perceived exertion, which is a scale of zero to 10, where 10 is the most exertion, mean meaning zero reps left. Some people find that confusing because it's like thinking backward. And at the end of the day, I hardly ever use these anyway as a measurement. I usually just go by what is the exercise, what are the sets and reps, what's the load, and get in my rep range with the right load. Training close to failure, one to three. Like actually prescribing RIR, it's it can be done. There are cases where if you're progressing with a set-based program, let's say you're gonna do three sets this week, four sets next week, five sets the following week, you might actually pay attention to your RIR and start submaximally first and kind of add more effort and keep the load the same, but you're actually adding sets, and that's the way you're progressing, if that makes any sense. But here's the point. I don't want to get off on a tangent here. You have to train hard enough to convince your body it needs to adapt. And we we already talked about this in the volume piece, but now I'm digging in specifically on this as a training variable. If you're stopping with like five or more reps left in the tank, you're probably not providing enough stimulus. I mean, the research, the hairy edge is probably four, four to five reps, right? Four maybe, but that's why I say one to three. Staying within one to three RIR, reps in reserve, reps left in the tank, shows nearly identical growth, muscle growth as training to complete failure, but without the fatigue accumulation of going to failure, as well as avoiding potential injury and stress on your joints and stuff, depending on the movement, right? I'm not saying never go to failure. Again, I want to say that, I want to make that clear. Small movements, they're easy on the joints, you can take complete failure, you know, like a bicep curl. But for most things, it's gonna be one to three. And if you're going to, if you're going to go to complete failure, it one technique is to do it, say, on the last set of of the of the movement. And many of you are underestimating how hard you need to train. If your sets feel too easy, you're definitely leaving gains on the table. And so if you've never done this before, I want to give you a tip. I want you to try something. It's called a final set AMRAP. All right. I learned this from Alex Bromley. I know a lot of guys do it. And what you're gonna do there is let's say you have three sets programmed for an exercise and it's your first week in the program. On that last set, even if it's prescribed, let's say eight to twelve, just keep going until almost complete failure and do as many as you can. And so this is more of a mental stretch goal because many of us think we're training hard. We get to that 12, we're like, oh my God, that's so hard. But if you're instead thinking, no, the goal isn't 12, the goal is as many as I can. Like it might be 20, I don't know. Let me just do it. And you might only find you get an extra one or two. And that kind of calibrates where hard is for you. Now, if you're doing a program that has sets across, like let's say starting strength, where it's three sets of five. Well, by definition, to maintain five reps across three sets, first of all, you're gonna need enough rest to almost fully recover. You're not gonna fully fully recover because you would need a lot more rest to do that. But you're gonna pretty close to fully recover if you're taking your, say, three to five minutes of rest. But also by definition, the first set and probably second set are slightly sub-maximal compared to the third set. Because if they were truly all-out grinder maximum sets, you're probably not gonna be able to get five on the third set, even if you take like five or ten minutes to recover. Does that make sense? In which case, a sets across program, it is the weight that you're selecting is probably such that only the final set is really close to failure, and the first two are slightly submax compared to that. Does that make sense? Now, you're not necessarily overthinking this. You're starting at some load on the bar, let's say Monday for your squat, that's fairly easy to get, and then you're going up the next week. The key here is those jumps in weight are the very thing that's gonna determine whether you're gonna hit all the sets or not. And so it's important to jump the right amount. And that's kind of a little bit of a feel thing and an experience thing, and working with a coach can help. But I wanted to make sure to clarify the difference between that and rep range type work. Now, since we're talking mostly hypertrophy today, we're primarily talking about something where you have a rep range as opposed to sets across. But to put a cap on it, training effort, training close to failure is what's gonna produce the result. So if you're doing a bunch of sets that are far short of that, they're kind of wasted sets. That's my point. All right, training variable number three in the hypertrophy hierarchy is progressive overload itself. Now you might say, okay, progressive overload, is that is that a variable that I can control, or is that just a thing that happens? Well, it's a little of both. We're gonna explain. Progressive overload is the adaptation mechanism. Your muscles only grow, okay, the sarcomeres in the muscle cells only get bigger if you give them a reason too, if you send the signal, if you tell your body this is important. And that reason is consistently increasing the absolute mechanical tension on those muscles over time. And why did I say it that way? Absolute meaning the the mechanical tension should go up over time. The relative mechanical tension is always going to be consistent with variable number two, one to three reps shy of failure. So let me let me tight, let me mention that again, okay? The relative mechanical tension should always be close to failure. The absolute mechanical tension, therefore, will have to go up because as you're getting relative close mechanical tension close to failure, and then you go to sleep and you eat, your muscles will grow, you'll be a little bit stronger, and that same that same level of mechanical tension you had last time won't be enough to get you to one to three repshire failure, and you're gonna have to do something about it. You're gonna have to lift more weights or and or do more reps so that you get into that regime of one to three repshire failure or do more sets. Because imagine if you did three sets last time and now you do a fourth set, that should push you into that regime as well. And it could be any combination of these things. This is why programming can get confusing for people. I'm like, what the heck do I do? This is also why I like to simplify it for beginners. Don't overthink it, just lift more weight. Just lift more weight, even if it's rep ranges. You know, I hear questions on this all the time. Should I go up and wait or reps? I'm like, wait, just do weight for a long time. And I still to this day, as an intermediate slash advanced, I don't know what you'd call me lifter, but I've been doing it four or five years pretty consistently and doing it the right way. If I am running a, let's say, eight or twelve week block and I have, let's say, a Romanian deadlift for eight to 12 reps. Let's just say that's as simple as that. There's no other changing across the 12 weeks. It's just 12 straight weeks, Romanian deadlift, eight to 12 reps. If my first week I am at 10 reps, well, I'm in the rep range, I'm gonna go up and wait next week. Well, maybe it drops to nine because I just want it heavier. Fine, I'm still in the rep range. Gonna go up the next week. Maybe it drops to eight. All right, I'm still gonna go up. Okay, and again, I can't be going up too much where it's past my capacity, but I'm going up, let's say maybe five pounds. Maybe it's two pounds for you. Maybe it's 10 pounds if you're really light. Doesn't matter. You're going up, the rep range might, you know, and then the next week I might get nine again, even though I went up in weight. See, you never know, right? You never know what your body's gonna be capable of until you try it. Then I go up and weight again. Okay, now I'm down to eight. Fine, I'm still in the rep range. I go up again. You see what's happening, right? Let's say I hit eight again. Okay, I go up again. Oh, and now I can get seven and I can't quite get eight. That's where I do, uh I have a decision point. Do I drop the weight and do a reset or do I try to get more reps? And there's not really a right answer to that, in my opinion. It, you know, you should have progressed for multiple weeks before having to make that decision. Let's just put it that way. If you didn't, then you probably jumped up in weight too much, or maybe started too heavy to begin with. That makes sense. But at some point you get to that decision. And I might decide, okay, I'm gonna reset, I'm gonna drop by 10%, and I'm gonna try to get a lot more reps than I got last time at that same 10% lighter weight, let's say, which might have been four weeks ago. Or I can say, you know what, I got seven last week. I'm gonna keep the weight this week and try to get eight and then nine, and then I'm gonna increase the weight again and keep going up and weight. All right. My point with all of that discussion, that example, was almost all the time, especially if you're newer or even intermediate, focus on increasing the weight first. It just makes it so much easier to make progress. The caveat I've noticed is when you're in fat loss and it's a lot harder to progress. That's where maybe going up in reps can be more helpful. Other people have different philosophy. Other people are like, no, just go up in both. Go up. There's there's something called double progression where you do weight, then reps, then weight, then reps. Okay, I'm not saying there's necessarily a right or wrong. I just prefer the intensity variable, the weight variable, to the volume or the reps variable. Even though I said volume is important, I don't mean it from a reps perspective. I mean from an overall weekly sets perspective. Okay, I hope I haven't lost a bunch of you guys. The point of this principle of progressive overload is let's look at the opposite. If you do the same workout with the same weights for the same reps week after week, well, now your body has zero reason to build new muscle. So if you're using the pink or the purple or yellow dumbbells, okay, the same dumbbells you have, or if you're limited on dumbbells at home because they only go up to 20s, or you know who I'm talking to. I'm talking to a lot of you, trust me, I know it, and there's no way to increase them. How are you gonna challenge yourself? I'm sorry, that you've got to get either bigger dumbbells, adjustable dumbbells, move to a barbell, get a machine with a stack that has much more weight that you can load some way to increase. Now, progressive overload does not mean just adding weight every session. Okay, and I say it that way because there are different things you can add every session. And also, if you're more advanced, you're not probably not gonna be able to add weight if you're already really, really heavy on some lifts. It might you might add weight every two weeks, every four weeks, every three months, depending on how advanced you are, in which case you're you're progressing, you're progressing in other ways. You're progressing with the RPE or the RIR, you're progressing with sets, you're progressing with reps. It gets a little more complicated, but if you mapped it out on a graph and you just kind of multiplied all those variables together, it would be slowly going up anyway, in some way. Okay, so again, reps, weight, set, a combination of these, intensity in some cases when you're more advanced. That's what we mean by progression. And the only way you know you're doing that is to track. You have to have a training log so you know what you did last session, you know what you your PRs are, and you can aim to do slightly more. That's it. Otherwise, you're guessing, and guessing is not gonna build muscle, at least not efficiently. I know people who do it over a long period of time, just kind of intuitively, but just like with eating, it can work, but it's gonna take a lot longer and be more frustrating, have more plateaus, so it helps to track. All right, before we get to the last two variables in the hypertrophy hierarchy, I want to make, I want to just mention something real quick. That if you're over 40, a lot of these variables are working together with your recovery and your hormones, right? These are two big pieces that are all working together with your training because as you age, optimizing these variables, the progressive overload, volume, and then recovery, become even more important. They only become more important because they're more stressed out and they they're more limited, right? And that's not a bad thing. It just is what it is. We have to be cognizant of it. So we want to maintain and we want to build. We really want to build muscle. I hate to say maintain because you can build muscle through your 90s, we've seen in the evidence. So I have a free guide I think you're gonna like. It's called strength training for hormone health. It's not really just about hormones, it's more the idea that, you know, for those of us who are strength training over 40, it's important that we are supporting our hormones and triggering our testosterone, our growth hormone, reproductive hormones, all of that. And so it kind of ties the two concepts together naturally, strength training and hormone health. So go to wits and weights.com slash free or click the link in the show notes to grab that. Again, it's my strength training for hormone health guide. For those of us over 40, go to wits and weights.com slash free or click the link in the show notes. All right, continuing to variable number four, we have exercise selection. Now, I think this is a very important variable because it affects a lot of other things. It affects your time in the gym, your effectiveness, it affects the volume we talked about, it affects progressive overload. I mean, I just mentioned if you don't have the right dumbbells or equipment, it's gonna limit you. It's gotta be things that you could do consistently, and what I mean consistently is not just do them, but be able to do them in an objectively consistent way. You know, we know that if you do a barbell squat down to just below parallel with the same form each time, that is objectively consistent. But if you're doing like a half squat, which you shouldn't be doing, but let's say you were doing that on purpose, how would you get it exactly to that point each time? You would need like spotter arms or something like that. You I don't know if that's a great example, but the point is the standard traditional exercises we're familiar with have evolved like that for a reason because they're very objective and should form the foundation of your lifting, right? The novel fancy stuff, um, isometric holds and bandwork and everything. Have fun with that if you'd like. You know, kettlebells, TRX, all that stuff, in my opinion, is more complementary and shouldn't necessarily be the foundation. And I know there's some people gonna argue with me on that. There's actually some people who are really big into kettlebells and using them. And I don't I don't have hard feelings one way or the other. Let's just be honest. But the compound lifts, squats, deadlifts, bench press, rows, overhead press, those should be part of your foundation. The variations on those, and then the targeted isolation work for the smaller muscle groups to fill it in and also address weak spots. And individual variation does matter, right? We're not all special snowflakes, but everyone is different in objective ways, like our anatomy and our limb lengths, and our physical limitations and injury history and surgeries and things like that. So if an exercise hurts or doesn't feel like it's working the target muscle, something has to change. Now, maybe you don't have the right form. That's that's often the first thing to look at, but maybe you do, and it's just not the ideal exercise for you. I definitely have exercises like that where I just don't feel it as much. Like every time I do one arm rows, whether it's on a bench or up at an angle, it feels okay, but I feel like I'm doing, I'm feeling like I'm trying to pull a much heavier weight than what it's giving me. And I would rather do like a T-bar row or even uh one of my new favorite exercises now is just a standing cable row with an attachment. What I mean is I take a V or a neutral grip attachment at the low position, I stand back a little bit and I pull to my chest. Nice squeeze in the back. And I really feel that in the lats. You know, pull-ups, I really feel those in the lats as well. So you've got to find the things that give you what you want. Now, the big lifts like squats, deadlifts, rows, I think that's that's gonna benefit everyone no matter what. Or I said rows, but uh not barbell rows, but I meant bench and overhead press. But you've got to be able to stick to it, perform it well, and progressively overload through exercise selection. Now, a few things I want to mention. You know, the lengthened part of the movement is a really important part, which is why we should have full range of motion for most exercises. Now you're like, well, wait, why don't I just do the length and portion? I'm I'm cool with you doing the length and portion for like finishers, but for the most part, you want the full range of motion, making sure you're also getting into the long length. And and that a simple way to think about that is like, let's say you're doing a barbell curl on the down position, the eccentric, you don't want to go halfway down, you want to go all the way down and really stretch out. That's the length and portion, right? Exercises with a deep stretch. This is why I like squats below peril. This is one of many reasons. It's not just for that. When you do a Romanian deadlift, you know, you're gonna put push your butt back and really feel that stretch in your hamstrings in the length and portion. If you're not feeling that, something's off. The form's off or the range of motion's off, for example. And what's interesting is these are the most mechanically efficient ways to do the exercise that give you the biggest bang for your buck, which is also why the big compound lifts themselves are super important because they use the most muscle mass, the most muscle fibers, the deepest. They allow you to push the most load. So you're just getting so much efficiency out of it. All right, so exercise selection is really important. That's really all I wanted to talk about on it. It could be its own podcast, to be honest. But very, very important that you're not just doing a bunch of light bodyweight stuff, that you're doing important, efficient exercises, full range of motion, as much muscle mass as possible, hitting the target muscle groups to have enough volume and progressive overload for those other variables. Okay. And then variable number five is frequency. Now, frequency is how often you train each muscle group per week. Now, training variable number one was volume. If you want to hit the volume needed, let's say it's 10 sets a week per muscle group, you're probably gonna naturally have enough frequency to do it, as opposed to doing it all in one three-hour marathon session on Wednesday, right? Now, there are some theories out there about very, very low volume programs. I think a lot of them are not backed up as sufficient, and it's kind of an outlier. Up to you to experiment, obviously. But for most people, you're gonna need enough frequency, which means being in the gym probably three days a week or four days a week for a lot of people. And even if you're intermediate advanced, a three-day a week program could still be highly effective. That's kind of where I'm going with that, as long as you are getting enough frequency. For a lot of you, four days a week just naturally gives you enough frequency with not too much time in the gym and enough recovery. And that's why a lot of programs have four day splits. Five days is also another way to do it, to get even more volume or to spread out that volume a little more. And then that logic can be carried to even six days with much shorter sessions. So, what do I mean by frequency? Frequency, again, is if you are squatting, how often are you squatting during the week? Not how much volume. You know, in one session, you might do two, three, four sets, but are you then squatting two times a week or three times a week? And it doesn't have to be necessarily the exact same squat pattern or squat. It's a similar movement pattern. It might be on one day a barbell back squat, another day a front squat. Or it might be the same movement at different rep ranges, different intensities. Heavy, light, medium, for example. If you're doing Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you want to squat three days a week. For most people, training each muscle group two to three times a week is what's going to get you into that 10 to 15 rep uh 10 to 15 sets regime. And we have to think of both direct and indirect work. So the compound lifts, going back to the last variable, give you a lot of both direct and indirect work. The bench press gives you chest and triceps, for example, and some other muscle groups as well, including your shoulders. So that's where the efficiency comes in. Now, do you have to track all of this to that level? You don't have to. There are some apps like Boostcamp that I use. I'm use my code Wits and Weights, all one word, to I don't know what I forget what the promotion is now, sorry guys, but it would it would help me out if you use my code. Anyway, Boostcamp actually tracks a ranking of how many of what percentage of your volume went toward each muscle group, kind of ranks it and does it like a heat map. It's kind of cool. All right, but you don't have to do it to that level. You just have to know if you have well-rounded program with enough frequency and volume, you're gonna hit enough things. Now, in my case, I'm working on strengthening my back, my upper body more than my lower body or the front of my upper body. So I actually have more pulling volume on purpose. I've got more like 15 to 20 sets of pulling volume, and it might only have, let's say, between five and 15 sets of other stuff, like leg volume. And if, again, since you don't want to fit this all into one day, this is why we need at least three or four. If you're, let's say, in your 70s, you've never lifted weights before, you may respond really well to two days a week to start, right? It depends on where you are, where you've been, your history, your responsiveness. That's really all it is. And it takes a lot less to maintain than to build. So if you're in a little more, if you're more in a maintenance phase and trying to prioritize other things over fitness, that could be another reason to have like only two or three days instead of three or four. All right. So it all has to do with the total work done for the week per training variable number one and how it's spread out with your training split to get that volume via frequency. Now, there is a separate benefit to having more sessions in terms of well, there's several benefits, right? One is the fatigue gets spread out. Another is practical benefits of time, the way you don't have really long marathon sessions in the gym. Another is there potentially is a slight advantage to hitting more frequency, even if the volume's the same, in terms of the stimulus to your muscles for growth. And it kind of makes count, it kind of makes intuitive sense when you think of, okay, well, if I'm I'm hitting it more frequently, I'm getting a little boost in that muscle protein synthesis and that signal each time, and I'm still letting it recover. There's some logic to that versus hitting it once really heavy in one training session and waiting a whole week and potentially getting a little bit of D training going on, right? That kind of makes sense. So frequency is really important. All right. So now I want to give you one bonus variable. And I wanted this to make this a bonus because it I feel like it's not its own separate independent thing. And that is your recovery capacity. All right. Recovery is like the power supply under all of this. So it's kind of the foundation of all these variables. If you have a perfect training program and you're doing all the other five variables, but you're underfed, you're underslept, you're overstressed, it's not going to matter. It's going to be kind of a waste of time. If anything, it might even stress you out more and actually set you back. Right. So this is why recovery is kind of an underlying foundation. If the hypertrophy hierarchy is a pyramid, the recovery is the ground that it sits on. And if it's soft, the pyramid just starts to sink. Hey, that's a pretty good analogy. Just came up with that. Okay. So, so what is recovery? Well, we know what that is, guys. You listen to the show at all. If you're new to the show, you know, go check out uh some of the more recent podcasts. I know we've covered recovery in almost every podcast. And that is sleep, that is nutrition, that is managing your stress. And those determine whether everything you're doing in the gym translates to meaningful adaptations because your body is ready for them and capable of them. Sleeping enough, you know, seven to nine hours. So you build your muscle, which happens during your sleep, you know, your brain rebuilds itself during sleep, your muscle protein synthesis is affected by sleep, your training quality, how you utilize your food, et cetera. Speaking of food, eating enough calories, especially protein. But some of you are eating a decent amount of protein, but maybe not enough calories because you're afraid of gaining fat. You're afraid of getting fat. And that's a whole separate topic. But when it comes to building muscle, at least be around maintenance with your food and ideally in a slight surplus or even in a meaningful surplus, depending on if you're going after that, you know, muscle building phase. If you're in a deficit and trying to build muscle, it's going to be very hard. You're fighting an uphill battle. And if you're doing it on purpose because you're in a fat loss phase, that's cool. That like we make that trade-off and understand that all these variables are going to be hampered a bit. And maybe that's okay because we're just trying to hold on to muscle. Going back to what I mentioned about volume needing to be a lot less to hold on to muscle, and it's more of the intensity or the weight on the bar that that maybe counts a little bit more. You take all that into a mind, into mind. Did I say that right? Yeah. And then, of course, your life stress, your chronic stress, which elevates cortisol, interferes with your recovery muscle building as well. So all of those are important. And without good recovery, then optimal volume effort, progressive overload, all of that is not going to produce nearly the results that you'd want. And that's why it's one of the very first things I assess with clients. And in physique university, we actually have a tracker just for that, for biofeedback, for recovery. We talk about it all the time, almost more importantly than the training in food. Like training in food almost becomes kind of easy to understand. And then the recovery piece is where people get hung up, especially for those of us over 40 who are strength training over 40. We're like, man, we've got so much going on in our life. We have to figure out how to make this work. Okay. Because recovery mediates that training adaptation curve. Under recovery is going to nullify a lot of what you're doing, but being recovered well is going to be an accelerator. So taking all this together, the hypertrophy hierarchy, it I wanted this not just to be a list of very, it's not just a listicle of variables. Okay. It's a framework of training maturity. Training maturity. That's your ability to just step back, assess where you're at, focus your energy on that highest leverage variable for your situation, like an intelligent human being. It's why you listen to this show. Whether you're doing it on your own, you're working with a coach, you're working with us, in physique university, doesn't matter, right? The thing about leverage points is they're not always the same for everyone, and they're not the same at every stage, every age, every phase. If you're a beginner, your highest leverage point might be just adding weight to the bar and tracking your lifts. If you're intermediate, you might need to look at your volume. If you're advanced, you might need to see are you really putting enough into recovery as you need? Those are just some examples. And early in my training, or even before I got into so-called training, I was doing CrossFit and everything else. I was always chasing the fun, silly details, whether that was tempo or, you know, fun exercises or variety, you know, or even conditioning. And I wasn't tracking my lifts. I wasn't progressing overload, progressively overloading. I didn't even understand that concept. Once I did, it actually took out a lot of the stress. It made it made going to the gym a confident experience, a fun experience in some ways, even though it's hard in its own way. But I was actually getting meaningful growth rather than just this mediocre flat line for years where I'm like, hey, maybe it's my diet, maybe it's this, maybe it's that. Maybe I need to run more, right? No. Simplify it and focus on volume, effort, progressive overload. The things we talked about today, find that leverage point for you, and you're gonna start to take off and make those gains. Identify your highest leverage point right now. Take a pause on the podcast and say it out loud. Right now, say it out loud. I don't care if you're in around other people and they're gonna look at you funny. Is it volume? Is it effort? Which of the variables is it today? Go back, look at the show notes, and rank them for yourself. Then and only then worry about the other ones until you've addressed the first ones. And that's how you'll get more mature as a train trainee and make consistent progress and be intelligent about this whole thing. All right. So if you want structured programs that already have these principles in place and where we can teach you through curriculum how to apply everything and how to do other things, like to breathe and brace, for example, your gym equipment, what you should be wearing on your feet, like those kinds of details as well. Check out Physique University. Use the link in the show notes or go to witsandweights.com slash physique. Inside there, we give you training templates. Right now we're up to nine or 10, I believe. We have another one coming along the way for our strong finish challenge. And these are training templates designed around the hypertrophy hierarchy and the lifting lessons that teach you how to program for yourself. Now, I'm not saying you have to program yourself. You get all the templates and you can literally run them as is. But then we teach you, hey, how can you adjust this for you to make it even more effective and personalized? Right? The goal isn't just to give you a cookie cutter program, it's to teach you the skill around that as well so that you have it for life, and then you're like super confident about how to do this. So go to witsandweights.com slash physique to learn more. There's a special code in the show notes as well. The details are there, so go check out the show notes, wits and weights.com slash physique. All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights, and remember to master the fundamentals before you chase the details. I'm Philip Higgs, and this is the Wits and Weights Podcast, and I will talk to you next time.
