There’s an epidemic. Strength training has infiltrated bodybuilding because strength-focused individuals won’t stay in their lane and yet we don’t really see bodybuilding infiltrating strength training. Why? Because strength training offers tangible progress in numbers which is addictive, and it’s a reaction to PED-users giving bad advice to build muscle. As a result, most people don’t know how to train for pure hypertrophy the right way. Many people are actually closeted bodybuilders, but they’re chasing that powerlifting carrot dangling in front of them saying “if you just get stronger, you’ll get all the muscle you need”. The dead giveaway for these people is when their avatars are of them posing, it goes without saying that aesthetics is what they’re truly after.
There’s two kinds of strength. The first is the powerlifting kind which is neural and skill-based. The second is hypertrophy based where thicker fibers lead to more strength. One tells the body "we need to work more efficiently”, the other says “we need to build more muscle to dilute the workload”. A bigger muscle means it has more potential for strength, but focusing on strength is not necessary for size.
It’s about getting stronger with higher reps, not just getting stronger to get stronger. When volume is not equal, low reps are typically trash when it comes to building muscle and inefficient. No, the 9-12 rep range is not a myth, there’s a reason it exists and that’s because it’s the most efficient for size. There’s more effective reps in a 12RM than a 5RM because you need the fatigue and time under tension alongside mechanical tension. A 5RM will recruit all fibers just like the last reps of a 12RM but the difference is that the fibers coming online at the end of the 12RM have to work in a fatigued state where cells are already depleted from the previous reps. Max fiber recruitment alone will not stimulate growth.
With pure hypertrophy training, there’s no such thing as “having a bad day”. If your main goal is size and you finish a workout thinking “this was a bad day”, you are actually not training for pure hypertrophy like you think you are. The numbers do NOT matter for hypertrophy, they are only the result. What matters is bringing the muscle to complete failure via exhaustion and upwards of 9-12 reps is needed for this to do it most effectively.
The idea that compounds like squats are more for strength also needs to die if pure hypertrophy is the goal. Stop squatting only 4-6 reps and start squatting up to 12 reps instead. Decrease the weight enough to fail close to ~12 reps on squats. There’s absolutely no reason why squats cannot be a hypertrophy-focused movement. If you’re purposely going heavy on the compounds to avoid the pain of higher reps, you are sacrificing hypertrophy.
Deloads are nonsense for hypertrophy. What exactly are you deloading for? To peak? There’s no competition to peak for, you are wasting your time. If you say you need a deload simply because you can’t recover, then you are doing too much volume, it’s that simple. Reduce the volume to where you can recover from it so that you won’t need a deload.
Minimalism also needs to die. This obsession with “the big 3” is also a form of powerlifting dogma that has no place in hypertrophy. You need isolations if size is the goal. Simply doing pulling movements will not give you all the bicep growth you need especially when the lats get strong enough to where the biceps are no longer the limiting factor. You must isolate the side delts, you must isolate the rear delts, embrace the machines. Machines are actually amazing for hypertrophy because they isolate a muscle very effectively to take it to failure whereas that muscle may not necessarily get the failure it needs from a compound movement.
Why do you have “strength” or “hypertrophy” blocks if hypertrophy is your goal? Your entire training should be one hypertrophy block.
“How much do you bench bro?” This meme has its roots in powerlifting. If you’re training for pure hypertrophy, questions like these are meaningless to you.
“You can gain muscle without getting a pump” is also bs advice. While true, this will yield you mediocre results by sacrificing hypertrophy. This phrase is usually tossed around by those afraid of discomfort which is why they hardly get a pump every time they lift. A pump is a very a good sign that you are training for pure hypertrophy.
Training for pure hypertrophy is actually very dull and painful. There’s nothing glamorous about it. You want to be able to stimulate a muscle with less weight, you should not require more weight to do so. Hypertrophy training turns less heads compared to strength training, but your physique will turn many more heads as you walk to the next exercise.