How to build muscle mass optimally is not a fixed thing. Science is still gaining new insights. But what are the three biggest of these achievements? Muscle growth expert Dr. Brad Schoenfeld answers in a new podcast.

1. THE NUMBER OF REPETITIONS

The biggest revolution in bodybuilding training knowledge lies in the training weight, and thus in the rep range. In the old days, bodybuilders were taught that for optimal muscle growth you should train in the range of 8 to 15 repetitions. Training with more than 15 repetitions is ennobling cardio, they thought. It has now been amply demonstrated that the rep range does not matter: you can build muscle optimally in any with any training weight, as long as you train to (near) muscle failure. “Any” should not be taken too literally; it means that anything between 3 and 40 repetitions is okay. This is useful if, for example, you train at home with light weights, or if you are recovering from an injury and cannot train with heavy weights.

Still, 8-15 reps is not bad advice, albeit for different reasons. If you go above say 20 reps, you may reach cardiovascular fatigue before muscle failure. And if you train with 1-5 reps, you may need to do more sets to reach the minimum number of stimulating reps desired.

Also an eye-opener: several coaches, including Brad Schoenfeld and Bill Campbell, advise to apply different rep ranges per muscle group. This way you can be sure that each muscle group receives sufficient growth stimuli. You may also appeal to the two types of muscle fibers that exist, but more research is needed for that.

2. REST TIMES

Many bodybuilders still believe that it is beneficial to train with short rest periods between sets, that is, less than 60 seconds. This would have beneficial acute effects on testosterone production and therefore also on muscle growth. The training stimulant in this case is metabolic stress. But although these effects are certainly there, in practice it appears to make no difference for muscle growth. So it is all about testosterone production over the entire day.

While research is still relatively limited, we can now assume that for optimal muscle growth, you should rest for 90 seconds between sets, and perhaps a bit longer for big compound exercises like the squat and deadlift. This longer wait creates the most mechanical tension, which is crucial for muscle growth and far more important than metabolic stress.

If you don’t have much time to train, you can of course use shorter rest periods and/or use training techniques such as dropsets and supersets. More about that in this article.

3. ANABOLIC WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY

It used to be thought that you should consume proteins immediately after training, because this had to happen within the so-called anabolic window of opportunity. This ‘window’ would be open for a maximum of one to two hours directly after training and would be necessary for a maximum anabolic response to food, especially proteins. In the meantime, several studies have been published from which we can learn that the timing of proteins, especially around training, is not or hardly important: it is all about the total amount of proteins that you consume in a day (around 2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight).

A little less important but still recommended is that you spread those proteins evenly throughout the day. We place our training exactly between two protein doses (meals). Then you are always good.

Listen to the podcast here.