The Three Primary Mechanisms of Building Muscle According to Research

Most of us use only one of them

Before I started working out, I used to think that building muscle was as simple as curling some dumbbells and chugging down protein shakes.

I couldn’t have been farther from the truth — building muscle is an excruciatingly slow and hard process. Even more so for naturals.

To add to this, the miasma of misinformation and half-baked knowledge in the fitness industry makes us use non-optimal ways to build muscle.

It took me more than 2 years to learn how to work out optimally and in just 9 months, I outdid my first 2 years of progress.

That’s how much you can speed up your progress once you learn how to optimally build muscle — a key part of this is understanding the 3 major mechanisms of muscle growth and making use of all three.

Most of Us Use Only One Of these

If there’s one person swearing by less weight and slow reps, there’s another exploding away with hundreds of kilos. If there’s one advocating 20+ rep sets, another loves the 4–6 rep range.

Whatever we do, the vast majority of us end up using only one of the three mechanisms which are:

• Muscle Damage: When you lift weights or perform any sort of resistance training, you induce “micro-tears” in the muscle. The muscle soreness you feel after a workout is the result of these tears. And when you rest, these tears are repaired through the activation of mTOR pathways and the muscle grows bigger.
• Metabolic Stress: The burn or “pump” we feel when we do a high rep set is due to this. Blood is pooled in the muscle and due to insufficient oxygen supply, metabolites such as lactates and hydrogen ions are released. This leads to an anabolic effect. So with this, you can achieve muscle growth using lighter loads and higher reps. It’s through this mechanism that Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) training works.
• Mechanical Tension: When you perform slow reps or isometric holds, you’re increasing the Time Under Tension (TUT) which increases muscle growth. Using a full Range Of Motion (ROM) also achieves the same effect. Essentially, the longer you “prolong” a rep and the heavier the weight you use, the more is the mechanical tension.

So making use of all three mechanisms of muscle involves not sticking to one rep range, rep style, or rep number but rather using all of them. I want to share 5 techniques to make better use of these mechanisms.

5 Techniques to Optimally Use All Three Mechanisms

There isn’t a single technique to efficiently stimulate all three mechanisms at the same time. This is to be expected as it’s physically impossible to — use a heavyweight, slow down each rep and perform a high number of reps.

“There isn’t a single technique to efficiently stimulate all three mechanisms at the same time.”

But there are techniques to optimally stimulate 2 mechanisms simultaneously and by incorporating a few of these in every workout, you can tap all 3 mechanisms.

• Slow Negatives — (Medium Mechanical Tension + High Muscle Damage): The negative or the eccentric portion of a rep has been found to cause more muscle damage than the concentric or the positive. To add to this, slowing down the negative increases the time under tension.
• Partial Reps — (High Metabolic Stress + Medium Muscle Damage): By limiting the ROM, you can get more and quicker reps which means more metabolic stress and muscle damage. You can do them as a standalone set or at the end of a set.
• Isometric Holds — (High Mechanical Tension + Medium Metabolic Stress): By isometrically holding a weight, you increase the time under tension and the blood flow. You can perform standalone isometric holds or pause and hold in the middle of your reps.
• Forced Reps —(High Muscle Damage + Medium Metabolic Stress): Basically cheat reps at the end of a set where you use bad form, momentum, and/or take support from a partner. Perform these at the end of a set only.
• Rest-Pause Reps — (High Muscle Damage + Medium Metabolic Stress): Similar to forced reps in terms of impact, these are good reps performed after taking a short rest (7 to 15 seconds) once a set is done. Again, perform these only at the end of a set.
• Drop-Set Reps — (High Muscle Damage + Medium Metabolic Stress): Once your set is done, you use a lower weight to get a few more reps. You can use a single aggressive drop where you use slightly lower weight and push past failure. OR you can use multiple drops where you don’t push as hard in each.

You can generate an almost endless number of techniques by permuting and combining the above ones. For example, you can perform a drop-set after a main set, then do a few rest-pause reps, and finally finish off with some forced reps.

A word of caution is that — don’t go overboard with these techniques. Too much set intensity can lead to overtraining which can cause recovery issues, muscle loss, rhabdomyolysis, and in extreme cases — muscle death.

So adjust the volume accordingly. Say you normally perform 4 sets of an exercise. If you plan on performing a drop-rest-pause-forced rep combination as we saw above, you might want to cut the volume to only 2 sets.

That’s all! Strategically make use of these techniques and reap the benefits of all three mechanisms of muscle growth.

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