Muscle Hypertrophy Program

Hypertrophy is driven primarily by mechanical tension over sufficient weekly volume, with proximity to failure and progressive overload as the levers (see muscle-hypertrophy).

Acute variables:

• Reps: mostly 6–12 (hypertrophy zone of the rm-continuum), with some 12–20 and some 4–6 work — growth occurs across a wide rep range when sets are taken close to failure.
• Effort: sets taken to ~0–3 RIR (see autoregulation-rpe-rir).
• Rest: ~1–2 min isolation, ~2–3 min compounds.
• Volume: ~10–20 hard sets/muscle/week (see weekly-sets-per-muscle), ramped from MEV toward MRV across a mesocycle then deloaded (see volume-landmarks).
• Frequency: each muscle ~2×/week — favoring an upper/lower or PPL split.

Sample upper/lower core lifts (compounds first, then isolation):

• Lower: back-squat, stiff-legged-deadlift / leg-curl, leg-press, standing-calf-raise.
• Upper: bench-press, bent-over-row, military-press, lat-pulldown, plus barbell-curl / tricep-pushdown / lateral-raise.

Progression & support: double progression within rep ranges; add a set or two per muscle across the mesocycle. A slight calorie surplus with adequate protein supports growth (see muscle-gain-nutrition). The classic high-volume bodybuilding template is documented at hypertrophy-bodybuilding-program; this is the modern volume-landmark version.

• Driven by mechanical tension × weekly volume; reps mostly 6–12 (use 4–20 across the plan).
• Sets to ~0–3 RIR; rest ~1–2 min isolation, ~2–3 min compounds.
• ~10–20 hard sets/muscle/week, ramped MEV→MRV then deload.
• Each muscle ~2×/week (upper/lower or PPL split).
• Slight calorie surplus + adequate protein supports growth.

• weekly-sets-per-muscle, volume-landmarks — the volume engine.
• double-progression, autoregulation-rpe-rir — progression/effort.
• upper-lower-program, push-pull-legs-program — splits delivering ~2× frequency.
• hypertrophy-bodybuilding-program — the classic high-volume template.
• muscle-hypertrophy, muscle-gain-nutrition — the adaptation and its fuel.