Spend a day at the gym, listen to a fitness podcast, or scroll through a few articles on a health website, and you’ll quickly realize the world of fitness has its own unique language. From exercises like cable kickbacks and lateral raises to acronyms like HIIT and EMOM, learning the language of fitness sometimes feels like you need your own exercise dictionary, especially when you hear a term like muscle hypertrophy. 

Now while muscle hypertrophy sounds a bit complex, it’s essential to familiarize yourself with this process if your goal is muscle growth. To break things down and help you out, we asked coach, athlete, and founder of Thundrbro Dave Lipson to answer the question, what is muscle hypertrophy? 

What Is Muscle Hypertrophy

Lipson explains hypertrophy by saying that it’s “one way that cells adapt to stress. The stress can include hormonal stimulation, an increased workload, etc., but when a cell increases in size beyond its normal size, it’s gone through hypertrophy.” 

Long story short, muscle hypertrophy is essentially the growth of your muscle cells, eventually resulting in larger muscles. Now that might seem like a simple breakdown, but there’s a whole lot of science behind how hypertrophy works, and a few ways that you can achieve it if growth is your goal. 

How to Acheive Muscle Hypertrophy 

“We’re talking about muscle hypertrophy of the striated muscle on your skeleton that puts action on ones increasing the cross-sectional size and strength of those muscles. Not only is it going to be accumulating muscle mass, but also accumulating contractile potential so that you can express more force, but it also helps with things like orthopedic safety and fortifying critical joints. It also improves aesthetics and muscularity,” he says. 

While that might sound complicated, what it really breaks down to is the fact that “there are multiple mechanisms that help drive muscle growth,” Lipson says, noting three main mechanisms: muscle tension, micro-tearing, and metabolic stress. 

Muscle Tension 

Lipson says, “When you have a lot of tension on muscles, it actually not only has a localized response but there’s what’s called a neuroendocrine response where the signal your muscle is sending to your brain is helping these very anabolic muscle-building hormones because your body is designed to survive. So when it understands that there’s stress here – that it needs to adapt – it’s going to accommodate that accordingly,” he says. 

Micro-Tearing

The second important factor when it comes to muscle hypertrophy is micro-tearing. 

“That’s the acute damage,” Lipson explains. “Inside the muscle cell to the sarcolemma, the outer membrane sheath and the internal contractile components of the muscles contract. When you do things like slow and controlled concentric or lengthening a muscle under load, you’re creating muscle micro-tearing and damaging these contractile bonds, which then heal and remodel thicker and stronger.”

The trainer says that this is “because your body is designed to adapt to that stress.” 

‍Metabolic Stress

Lipson lists metabolic stress as the final mechanism, describing it as “the acute buildup of the byproducts of high rep muscular contraction – things like hydrogen and lactate that get trapped in the muscle cell and cause inter- and intracellular swelling. So when someone says they’ve ‘got a big pump,’ oftentimes what they’re referring to is the metabolic stress,” he says. 

“That happens from high rep, short rest, lightweight lifting where you’re essentially taking the muscles to failure and not letting them fully recover before you do another set.” 

Lipson says that this type of training often gives that “veins popping out of muscles” appearance, and notes that this is typically how he prepares for a show. 

“Before I go on stage, I’m going to do a lot of light, banded reps to try to create some metabolic stress,” he says but points out that this probably isn’t the most effective way to grow your muscles. 

“The most effective [method] is probably muscle tension,” he says. “So what I’m trying to do is show people how to achieve that effectively in a way that’s going to allow them to do it. I think a lot of people, especially from CrossFit or strength sports, are used to lifting weights fast and heavy. And the truth is that when you create momentum on a bar –when you’re lifting too fast – you’re actually taking away a lot of that muscle tension. In a lot of cases, slowing down and doing things in a controlled fashion is not only safer, but it’s more effective for growing muscle.” 

Now that you know a little more about muscle hypertrophy, you can use Lipson’s knowledge to optimize your workouts and achieve the gains you desire. And if that all went over your head, but you still want those gains, Lipson offers training programs that take all his knowledge and pack them into easy-to-follow workouts so you can build muscle, no research needed. 

Want more from Dave Lipson? Follow him @davefreakinglipson, and take advantage of his fitness knowledge with training programs, 1-on-1 coaching, and nutrition plans here. 

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