Building muscle is a marathon, not a sprint. That said, there’s no reason you shouldn’t look for every possible avenue to speed things up on your journey.
- Exercise science has come a long way in recent years, revealing more pathways to accelerated muscle growth than ever before.
These five tips for muscle growth are steeped in real science. Some are based on cutting-edge research, others have been endorsed by the world’s leading experts in building muscle fast. What’s the common denominator? You can easily implement all five into your workout routine and boost your muscle growth right away.
5 Science-Based Hacks for Muscle Growth
These five tips for muscle growth are meant to help you overcome the physiological — and logistical — challenges that accompany bodybuilding training.
One big thing: While the recommendations below are all backed by scientific academia, they aren’t a panacea. You still need to make sure your diet and general training habits are in check.
1. Long-Length Partials
How It Works: There are three primary factors that drive muscle growth; mechanical tension, metabolic stress, and muscle damage. (1) Mechanical tension is the most important of the three, and long-length partials (LLPs) generate buckets of it.
- In 2022, Pedrosa et al. found that the bottom half of the leg extension “promoted greater relative hypertrophy in certain muscle regions.” (2)
- More recently, researchers from the Stronger by Science coalition, along with content creator Jeff Nippard, published a narrative review which endorsed LLPs even further, saying, “it appears that utilizing a ROM that biases longer muscle lengths should be the default approach to exercise technique when trying to maximize hypertrophy.” (3)
How To Do It: There are plenty of ways to add LLPs into your routine. Look to muscle growth exercises that are easier to start than they are to finish, such as the pull-up. These moves are solid candidates because, even if you can’t complete the full range of motion, you can keep pumping out reps in the first half when the muscle is stretched.
Start by adding five to 10 long-length partials at the end of your last set of each exercise during a workout and see if your rate of muscle growth starts to accelerate.
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2. Supersets
How It Works: Conventional weight room wisdom suggests that supersetting your exercises slightly diminishes the effect you’d get from them in exchange for saving you time in the gym. However, that doesn’t quite appear to be the case:
- In 2017, Brentano & colleagues noted, “in physically active men, implementing super-sets … promotes greater muscle effort and muscle damage…” (4)
- Authors Paz et al. found even more compelling data: “Paired sets … produced a greater training volume in less time and may induce greater fatigue and thereby provide an enhanced training stimulus.” (5)
Remember, your muscles don’t understand how much a dumbbell weighs. Supersets may diminish your top-end strength, but can provide a time-efficient challenge all the same.
How To Do It: If you’re exercising on the clock, you can incorporate antagonistic supersets involving two unrelated movements and rest easy knowing it won’t interfere with your muscle growth efforts.
To double down on the hypertrophy benefits, we suggest dabbling with a few supersets targeting the same muscle groups in different ways. This can look like performing a set of push-ups right after hitting the dumbbell bench press or blasting your shoulders with two lateral raise variations back-to-back — one heavy, and one light.
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3. Blood Flow Restriction
How It Works: There are multiple mechanisms at play during BFR work, ranging from amplified motor unit recruitment (6) to cellular swelling and metabolic stress (one of the three main drivers of hypertrophy, remember).
- In 2012, Laurentino et al. found BFR to grow the quads and add strength “similarly” to standard high-intensity training. (7) They also argued that occlusion training encouraged the development of myonuclei — the control centers of muscle fibers — which are mandatory for supporting new muscle growth.
- In 2013, Lowery found that blood flow restriction stimulated muscle growth “to the same degree” as regular training. (8)
BFR has also been used in clinical settings to reduce muscle loss in patients who underwent surgeries like ACL reconstruction. (9) All told, there are a host of benefits and very few apparent downsides to incorporating BFR, especially for your accessory training.
How To Do It: You’ll have to purchase tourniquets online or fashion your own out of a pair of knee wraps or Ace bandages. Wrap your arm or leg as close to your torso as you can (armpit or groin are your targets). Then, select a very light weight and perform one set of 30 reps, followed by four sets of 15 reps with the same weight. Rest only 30 seconds between all sets.
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4. Exercise Swaps
How It Works: Researchers often analyze two different exercises and measure their effects on muscle growth, among other factors, to draw larger conclusions about our physiology.
- In 2022, triceps muscle growth was “substantially greater” from performing overhead elbow extensions compared to standard pushdowns. (10)
- Maeo and colleagues observed almost 50% more hamstring muscle growth from seated leg curls than prone leg curls. (11)
- The preacher curl promoted greater distal biceps growth than any other region, per researchers in 2023. (12)
- Kinoshita et al. showed that standing calf raises can produce more than five times more muscle growth in the calves than the seated variation. (13)
A landmark paper from 2014 by Fonseca et al. (14) found no significant difference between exercise variations as long as intensity crosses an “alleged threshold.” This does sort of refute some of the findings above, but they did note that making exercise swaps is more effective for strength gain than sticking with the same movements.
How To Do It: If you perform one of the exercises above, try swapping them out for the “more effective” version. You might find that you don’t need to do both moves; if these studies hold water, and we think they do, the standing calf raise basically nullifies the need to do seated calf raises for muscle growth.
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5. Inter-set Stretching
How It Works: Similar to some of the other muscle growth hacks described above, inter-set stretching seems to interact with the mechanisms of muscle hypertrophy without requiring more heavy lifting, albeit to a much lesser degree.
- In 2022, Van Every (15) found that loaded inter-set stretching may enhance muscle thickness after studying its effects on the calves.
- In 2019, more direct data were gathered by Evangelista & colleagues. (16) “Although our findings might suggest a benefit of adding [inter-set stretching] for optimizing hypertrophy … our data are not sufficient enough to conclude that [inter-set stretching] is superior to [strength training] for inducing muscle hypertrophic adaptations.”
Consider this one to be more of a cherry-on-top situation. There doesn’t appear to be any harm in it, and inter-set stretching may be a productive use of your downtime between sets as long as you give yourself enough real rest afterward.
How To Do It: Immediately after you finish a set of any exercise, put the weights down and go stretch the muscle you just worked for 30 to 45 seconds. Make it a fairly aggressive — but not painful — stretch, and be sure to rest for at least another minute before returning to the weights.
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References
- Schoenfeld B. J. (2010). The mechanisms of muscle hypertrophy and their application to resistance training. Journal of strength and conditioning research, 24(10), 2857–2872.
- Pedrosa, G. F., Lima, F. V., Schoenfeld, B. J., Lacerda, L. T., Simões, M. G., Pereira, M. R., Diniz, R. C. R., & Chagas, M. H. (2022). Partial range of motion training elicits favorable improvements in muscular adaptations when carried out at long muscle lengths. European journal of sport science, 22(8), 1250–1260.
- Androulakis Korakakis, P.; Wolf, M.; Coleman, M.; Burke, R.; Piñero, A.; Nippard, J.; Schoenfeld, B.J. Optimizing Resistance Training Technique to Maximize Muscle Hypertrophy: A Narrative Review. J. Funct. Morphol. Kinesiol. 2024, 9, 9.
- Brentano, M. A., Umpierre, D., Santos, L. P., Lopes, A. L., Radaelli, R., Pinto, R. S., & Kruel, L. F. M. (2017). Muscle Damage and Muscle Activity Induced by Strength Training Super-Sets in Physically Active Men. Journal of strength and conditioning research, 31(7), 1847–1858.
- Paz, G. A., Robbins, D. W., de Oliveira, C. G., Bottaro, M., & Miranda, H. (2017). Volume Load and Neuromuscular Fatigue During an Acute Bout of Agonist-Antagonist Paired-Set vs. Traditional-Set Training. Journal of strength and conditioning research, 31(10), 2777–2784.
- Suga T, Okita K, Takada S, Omokawa M, Kadoguchi T, Yokota T, Hirabayashi K, Takahashi M, Morita N, Horiuchi M, Kinugawa S, Tsutsui H. Effect of multiple set on intramuscular metabolic stress during low-intensity resistance exercise with blood flow restriction. Eur J Appl Physiol. 2012 Nov;112(11):3915-20. doi: 10.1007/s00421-012-2377-x. Epub 2012 Mar 14. PMID: 22415101; PMCID: PMC3474903.
- Laurentino, G. C., Ugrinowitsch, C., Roschel, H., Aoki, M. S., Soares, A. G., Neves, M., Jr, Aihara, A. Y., Fernandes, A.daR., & Tricoli, V. (2012). Strength training with blood flow restriction diminishes myostatin gene expression. Medicine and science in sports and exercise, 44(3), 406–412.
- Lowery, Ryan & Joy, Jordan & Loenneke, Jeremy & De Souza, Eduardo & Machado, Marco & Dudeck, Joshua & Wilson, Jacob. (2013). Practical blood flow restriction training increases muscle hypertrophy during a periodized resistance training programme. Clinical physiology and functional imaging. 34. 10.1111/cpf.12099.
- Takarada, Y., Takazawa, H., & Ishii, N. (2000). Applications of vascular occlusion diminish disuse atrophy of knee extensor muscles. Medicine and science in sports and exercise, 32(12), 2035–2039.
- Maeo, Sumiaki & Wu, Yuhang & Huang, Meng & Sakurai, Hikaru & Kusagawa, Yuki & Sugiyama, Takashi & Kanehisa, Hiroaki & Isaka, Tadao. (2022). Triceps brachii hypertrophy is substantially greater after elbow extension training performed in the overhead versus neutral arm position. European Journal of Sport Science. 1-26. 10.1080/17461391.2022.2100279.
- Maeo S, Huang M, Wu Y, Sakurai H, Kusagawa Y, Sugiyama T, Kanehisa H, Isaka T. Greater Hamstrings Muscle Hypertrophy but Similar Damage Protection after Training at Long versus Short Muscle Lengths. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2021 Apr 1;53(4):825-837. doi: 10.1249/MSS.0000000000002523. PMID: 33009197; PMCID: PMC7969179.
- Pedrosa GF, Simões MG, Figueiredo MOC, Lacerda LT, Schoenfeld BJ, Lima FV, Chagas MH, Diniz RCR. Training in the Initial Range of Motion Promotes Greater Muscle Adaptations Than at Final in the Arm Curl. Sports (Basel). 2023 Feb 6;11(2):39. doi: 10.3390/sports11020039. PMID: 36828324; PMCID: PMC9960616.
- Kinoshita M, Maeo S, Kobayashi Y, Eihara Y, Ono M, Sato M, Sugiyama T, Kanehisa H, Isaka T. Triceps surae muscle hypertrophy is greater after standing versus seated calf-raise training. Front Physiol. 2023 Dec 13;14:1272106. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2023.1272106. PMID: 38156065; PMCID: PMC10753835.
- Fonseca, R. M., Roschel, H., Tricoli, V., de Souza, E. O., Wilson, J. M., Laurentino, G. C., Aihara, A. Y., de Souza Leão, A. R., & Ugrinowitsch, C. (2014). Changes in exercises are more effective than in loading schemes to improve muscle strength. Journal of strength and conditioning research, 28(11), 3085–3092.
- Van Every, D. W., Coleman, M., Rosa, A., Zambrano, H., Plotkin, D., Torres, X., Mercado, M., De Souza, E. O., Alto, A., Oberlin, D. J., Vigotsky, A. D., & Schoenfeld, B. J. (2022). Loaded inter-set stretch may selectively enhance muscular adaptations of the plantar flexors. PloS one, 17(9), e0273451.
- Evangelista, A. L., De Souza, E. O., Moreira, D. C. B., Alonso, A. C., Teixeira, C. V. S., Wadhi, T., Rauch, J., Bocalini, D. S., Pereira, P. E. A., & Greve, J. M. D. (2019). Interset Stretching vs. Traditional Strength Training: Effects on Muscle Strength and Size in Untrained Individuals. Journal of strength and conditioning research, 33 Suppl 1, S159–S166.
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