in this video Jeff nippard and I will give you a detailed guide for exactly how to build your first 5 kilograms of muscle you will learn what makes muscle grow how to set up your own training program and most importantly what habits you should develop early on to help you easily reach and even surpass the intermediate stage let's go contrary to what many people believe muscle doesn't grow because damaged muscle fibers are rebuilt bigger after training it also doesn't grow because of the pumps and burns you get from lifting light weights it doesn't grow because of soreness and it definitely doesn't grow because of the so-called muscle confusion or surprising your body with a new workout every week these things can play some role in muscle growth but the primary initiator of growth is without question mechanical tension virtually all training related muscle growth occurs as a result of placing muscle fibers under high levels of tension when you lift weights muscle fibers are stretched and pulled under resistance this is what we mean by mechanical tension within muscle fibers there are some proteins that are sensitive to tension and get deformed by it researchers call them mechanosensors when these mechanosensors deform their new shape reacts with other molecules inside the muscle cell triggering a complex molecular Cascade that ends with the construction of new muscle tissue from amino acids taken from food now it's important to point out that this process is still poorly understood it's not known exactly which proteins act as mechanosensors or how they do it and the molecular Cascade they trigger is not entirely mapped out so Mass spect or byproduct of fatigue likely plays a role in amplifying the muscle building signal initiated by tension also besides lifting heavy weights other factors such as the cellular stretch caused by muscle pump or just simply stretching a muscle for prolonged periods of time may also be able to affect mechanosensors enough to kick-start the construction of some new muscle tissue but what is clear is that the tension produced by lifting weights is by far the most important initiator of the molecular Cascade that ends in muscle protein synthesis oh please mechanosense or smallacular Cascades protein synthesis fancy words don't build muscle bro heart training does yeah obviously you don't need to know any of this stuff to build muscle if you simply apply a good workout routine and work hard in the gym you can experience muscle growth without understanding why it works so instead of talking about mechanic sensors molecular Cascades and protein synthesis I could have just given you a list of exercises by now some quick tips and sent you on your way and don't worry we will show you some training routines later on but the reason we wanted to start with an explanation of what causes muscle to grow is because this reveals a few lessons that you would benefit immensely from adopting as the foundation of your training philosophy so here's Jeff with lesson number one don't chase Sensations in the muscle Chase progress if you pay attention to people training in commercial gyms you'll notice that many of them base their workouts around what feels like it's working for example many people are drawn to exercises that allow them to not only feel the target muscle but also look at it at the same time a friend will sometimes keep an eye on the muscle to make sure it can't escape growth other people are drawn to cables because they give this nice smooth feeling and others simply do whatever gets them the biggest pump taking inspiration from the spirit animal of bodybuilding many people judge the effectiveness of a workout based on whether it gets them sore the next day this usually means chasing the burn and taking the fact that you feel wrecked the day after as proof of a job well done the thing all these people have in common is that they're all chasing feelings not going by what feels to be working is understandable it's natural to want immediate feedback that the work you're putting in is actually doing something problem is that muscle soreness pumps aches and burns are all poor indicators of growth possible to feel absolutely wrecked after a workout that didn't actually make you much if any bigger such as downhill running wall climbing or a cardio session on the rowing machine it's also possible to see very little muscle growth even if you got a great pump by lifting light weights with short rest periods the science supports this as well studies from flannon colleagues and Thomas and colleagues have shown that muscle aches and soreness are not only unnecessary for muscle growth they can be counterproductive because when there's a lot of muscle damage a large part of growth is directed toward repairing damaged muscle tissue rather than building new muscle tissue as for pump training this 2019 study showed that lifting light weights with short rest periods will create short-term increases in muscle size for a few hours because of temporary fluid shifts however this doesn't necessarily correlate to more muscle fiber growth over time we should be concerned with growing actual muscle tissue we want to build size that doesn't deflate soon after you leave the gym so if you can't use Muscle Sensations to judge the effectiveness of your training what should you use instead the answer is actually very simple focus on making progress let's say you did three sets of eight reps with 100 pounds on the bench press and it provided enough tension to get the muscle building machinery going as the muscle grows it gets stronger and eventually that same three sets of eight with a hundred pounds will no longer provide enough tension to trigger new muscle growth it's too easy for you now so now you need to create more tension you can do that by either adding more weight for example doing three sets of eight with 105 pounds doing more reps with the same weight so doing three sets of nine with 100 pounds or doing an extra set every one of these counts as progress because every one of these increases tension however I recommend using them in this order your first progression Choice should be adding weight to the bar or the machine while keeping reps the same as long as you can do this you're golden keep it up if you increase the weight but it causes you to miss some reps that means it's time to switch to adding reps Instead try adding one or two reps each week at the same weight and once you return to the original number of reps try increasing the weight again this is what coaches call Double progression if you can't increase either the load or the Reps consider adding an extra set eventually you'll be able to add some weight to at least one of those sets and then you can return to your original number of sets again remember the best way to ensure a long-term muscle growth is to focus on making progress don't chase soreness don't chase the pump don't chase the burn don't chase fatigue Chase progress single most helpful habits you can learn in the early stages of training is tracking your workouts every time you train you should be writing down the exercises the weights the sets and Reps and other notes related to technique and effort can be helpful too especially as you get more advanced in every workout your goal should be to beat the training log in some way try not to be one of those people that chooses weights at random based on whatever you feel like that day that'll only get you so far the weights you use and the number of sets and Reps you do should almost always be decided by the training log the way you record your training is up to you you can use a workout app the notes app on your phone a spreadsheet or an old school notebook just don't keep it in your head write it down the act of tracking your workouts not only make sure that you don't forget what you did in between workouts you can also increase your motivation improve to yourself that you're actually serious about making progress lesson two the best indicator of muscle growth is increased strength together [Music] foreign [Music] s isolate single muscle fibers and measure how much force they can produce they find that the thickness of the fiber strongly predicts how much force it can generate the relationship is very clear nearly a straight line the thicker the fiber the more force it can produce whole muscle size also correlates with strength in trained athletes this study by breshwane Abe track the lean body mass and performance of 20 Elite male power lifters which included world and national champions and found that the amount of weight they could lift on the squat bench press and deadlift could be predicted to a high degree of accuracy by the amount of muscle mass the lifters had other studies that looked at Olympic weightlifters and rugby players found the same thing the more jacked people were the stronger they were on average this correlation holds true for recreational lifters as well when both trained and untrained people are asked to lift as much as they can on an exercise that requires no skill such as leg extensions the amount of weight they can lift strongly correlates with their muscle size is this surprising to you probably not I mean it's pretty intuitive that a bigger muscle is also a stronger muscle if you see a guy who's jacked you intuitively expect him to be strong too but what is not intuitive to most people is that you can use strength as an indicator of whether you are succeeding or failing to build muscle if you are succeeding to build muscle you should be able to lift progressively heavier weights over time this is assuming it's on the same exercise for the same number of reps and with the same lifting technique on the other hand if you are not able to lift progressively heavier weights over time or at least do more reps with the same weight you should take this as a warning sign that you are failing to grow even if you are training consistently getting pumps and experiencing soreness this of course doesn't mean that strength and size will always increase at a one-to-one ratio in your first few months of lifting strength typically increases faster than muscle does due to neurological changes and improved lifting technique similarly experienced lifters can get stronger without gaining any new muscle mass if they practice a lift in a very low rep range and focus strictly on the skill aspect of lifting but assuming you're following the fundamental principles of hypertrophy training that we'll get to next adding strength is the best indicator that you're adding muscle this is a key point to build maximum muscle naturally especially as a new lifter it's very important that you see our strength increase over time now there are six main types of exercises that you should make progress on a squat type movement a hip hinge movement a horizontal press a Vertical Press a horizontal pull and a vertical pull different versions of these movements can be performed using barbells dumbbells or machines and luckily there are no must do exercises for hypertrophy you can pick and choose based on your preferences and your capabilities with that said I generally do recommend at least learning six fundamental lifts the squat deadlift bench press overhead press pen lay row and pull-ups or chin UPS making progress on these six exercises will make sure that you're gaining muscle across more or less your entire body again it doesn't have to be exactly these six but I do think these are basic lifts that almost everyone has access to to give you some idea of how much strength you need to gain to indicate a 10 pound increase in muscle mass here's an approximate guide for males so you'd aim to increase your squat six rep max by around 70 pounds or about 30 kilos increase your deadlift 6 rep max by 80 pounds or 35 kilos and so on down the list the strength increases should collectively indicate a 10 pound increase in total body muscle for the majority of lifters and you can see the comparable figures for female lifters here this time indicating a five to six pound increase in muscle mass rather than 10. for example as a male if you can currently bench press 100 pounds or 45 kilos for six reps you should aim to increase your bench press to 155 pounds or 70 kilos for six reps and if you can make all these improvements I can almost guarantee you'll have put on 10 pounds of new muscle now there are some caveats that we need to mention here first these numbers will not be totally accurate depending on your bone structure you may have to increase some lifts more than others for example if you have short arms you may need to add a bit more weight to the bench press and overhead press compared to a guy with longer arms but you may need to add a bit less for chin ups and deadlifts that's because short arms put to at an advantage on pushing exercises and at a disadvantage on pooling exercises second these numbers may not fully account for the rapid increases in strength that are caused by other factors besides muscle growth when you're a beginner in your first few months of lifting strength increases much faster than muscle size in fact you can get stronger even without gaining any muscle this is because in the early stage of training most strain gains are caused by neural adaptations improved lifting technique and changes in connective tissues neural adaptations means that your nervous system becomes better at recruiting and coordinating the contraction of muscle fibers improve of the lifting technique means that you learn how to perform an exercise to achieve better leverages and more efficient movement patterns and changes in connective tissues refers to increased tendon stiffness and enhanced capacity to transmit force laterally between the muscle fibers and its surrounding collagen layer all these things allow you to move more weight without gaining any muscle we try to account for these factors but if in your case these early adaptations are particularly strong you may need to add 5 to 10 kilograms more to your lifts than the numbers we've shown you and finally if other genetic factors give you above average natural ability for strength you will need to add significantly more weight to the bar than the numbers we've shown you it is possible to be unusually strong for your level of muscularity if your height and Bone length give you good leverages your muscles attach the bones further away from joints you've got long and elastic tendons you've got a high fast switch to slow twitch muscle fiber ratio and your nervous system can send action potentials to motor units at a higher rate than average this is called rate coding these factors explain why the most muscular guy isn't always the one that can lift the most weight or why the same increase in muscle size may lead to different strength gains into individuals the fact that increased strength is the best indicator of muscle growth isn't useful in comparing two individuals to one another it's only useful for assessing one individual's progress over time but all things considered these are good goals to have in the gym if you want to gain 5 kilograms of muscle as a male beginner you should aim to add 30 kilograms to your squat 35 to your deadlift 25 your bench press 15 to your overhead press 20 to your pen lay row and 15 to your chin UPS lesson three training will not maximize muscle growth if it doesn't provide enough tension or if it doesn't provide tension enough times So based on what I've told you so far you may be thinking that building muscle is all about lifting weights as heavy as possible but that's not quite right to successfully stimulate muscle growth your training must not only provide sufficient tension in terms of the loads you're using but it must also provide that tension a sufficient number of times in the form of sets and Reps both of these factors are needed you need enough tension and you need to apply that tension enough times okay so your training will provide enough tension as long as you're pushing your sets close enough to muscular failure you can think of muscular failure as the point where you can no longer do another rep with reasonably good technique if you're getting within a few reps of that point you're probably generating enough tension to maximize growth but this partly depends on how heavy you're lifting for example if you select a weight so heavy that you can only lift it for four reps that weight will produce a very high amount of tension from the very first rep because you need to recruit so many muscle fibers just to get the weight moving on the other hand if you select a weight so light that you can lift it for 20 reps there won't be much tension at the beginning of the set at all it isn't until you get closer and closer to failure that more and more muscle fibers are recruited until you eventually reach that same high level of tension so let's say you pick a weight that you can do for 20 reps and you decide to stop at rep 12 because you start to feel that burning sensation that said wouldn't provide enough tension to trigger very much muscle growth to make sure that you're getting the maximum stimulus at this weight you'd need to take the set closer to failure ideally stopping at rep 18 19 or 20. it's important to understand this so that you don't choose training styles that simply aren't heavy enough for example some people expect to build muscle by doing athletic circuit style workouts but if you can do a hundred knee raises before hitting failure doing 15 of them every 30 seconds won't grow your legs at all there's simply not enough tension on the muscle if you can do 30 kettlebell swings before hitting failure doing 15 swings may get your heart rate up it may burn a few calories it may even feel challenging but it isn't building muscle if you can do 20 reps with a certain weight on the leg press doing eight reps with that same weight isn't building much muscle either this is a very common mistake that a lot of new lifters make they stop their sets at the first feeling of discomfort and that's almost always too many reps away from failure to provide enough tension now A good rule of thumb is to take most of your sets one to three reps shy of fill once you've got the technique figured out and have built a decent strength Foundation it is important to take some sets all the way to failure in order to learn what true failure feels like several Studies have shown that beginners are understandably not very good at judging how close they are to failure and often underestimate it by five reps or more I think this explains why so many people stop making progress fairly early on in their lifting career they just aren't pushing their set hard enough to get them past the Newbie phase now you might ask well if high tension is the goal why not choose the heaviest weight I can handle lift it once and be done with it because that doesn't work either in addition to subjecting muscle fibers to sufficient tension you also need to do it a certain number of times in the form of reps and sets for instance study by mattocks and colleagues found that the group that did two workouts a week each consisting of five single Max reps on the chest press machine fail to build any significant amount of muscle over the course of eight weeks this is important to understand because when you track your lifts in the gym it's easy to get tempted into increasing the weight on the bar and the expense of reps on paper that can appear as progress yet if the number of reps per workout gets too low you can actually create an inferior muscle building stimulus despite having more weight on the bar it's common for guys to get into this situation especially on the bench press a guy may start doing sets of 8 reps on the bench stuck at the same way wait for a few weeks he might decide to add 5 kilograms and drop the Reps down to 6. happy with his apparent strain gains a few weeks later he might add another 5 kilograms and drop the Reps down to four finally impatient to join The 100 Club he might continue to increase the weight until the only way he can bench is with his body getting a bonus set of rows in the process this is not good you have to strike a balance between the weight on the bottom machine and the number of reps and sets you do per workout a good way to do that is to set up your training program based on the following guidelines do around 9 to 12 sets per body part per week so 9 to 12 of chest 9 to 12 for Back 9 to 12 for quads Etc note that smaller muscle groups like biceps triceps or rear delts only need three to six weekly sets because of overlap with compound lifts take all sets within 0 and 3 reps of failure they need to be hard most of your sets should be done in the 6 to 12 rep range this is called a medium rep range so most of your bench press squat or barbell row sets should be performed with a weight that makes you reach failure in the 6 to 12 rep range some of your sets can be done in the one to five rep range and 12 to 20 range these are called low and high rep ranges it can be beneficial to sometimes train the big compound lifts with heavy weights in a low rep range with a focus on strength progression and the higher rep range can be advantageous for isolation exercises some people find that training smaller muscle groups with heavy weights leads to poor technique or joint pain so it can be beneficial to do isolation exercises such as biceps curls triceps extensions lateral raises leg extensions or cable flies with lighter weights that make you reach failure in the 12 to 20 rep range and finally distribute those sets over one to three workouts per week so for example you can do all your weekly bench press sets in a single workout two workouts or three workouts depending on your preferences and schedule if you set up your training routine based on these guidelines you're on the right track so with this foundation in place here are some sample routines that you can use in the gym right away and you can pause the video or take a screenshot if you want to have a closer look this is a sample full body split that you can run three days a week this is a sample upper lower split you can run four days a week and this is a modified body part split or modified row split that you can run five days a week now if you're wondering which of these is the best or which one you should use the answer is it doesn't really matter each split has its own advantages and disadvantages but I do think that all three of these will produce very similar results as long as they're applied consistently that's the key just progressing through the workouts consistently for this reason the split that'll work best for you is the one that best fits your schedule and personal preference as for tracking workouts since my workout app hasn't been updated in years and Jeff's workout app is not out yet we recommend using the note tab on your phone you can do a separate node for each workout list the number of exercises you need to do list the number of sets and Reps and list how close you got to failure on each set as you do the sets you can check them off and update last week's numbers with what you did today lastly you can write a note for each exercise to remind yourself what to aim for next time for example you can write next time add 2.5 kilograms to all sets or add the rep to set 1 and 2 or improve technique on set 3 or keep the Reps the same you'll be surprised what the difference that makes your notes give you a goal for each workout and ensure that you're not choosing weights and Reps at random foreign this is the end of part one in part two of this video which I'll release in a few weeks Jeff and I will cover the nutrition side of building your first five kilograms of muscle so if you aren't subscribed already make sure you do that so you don't miss it and if you're looking to put all the information we covered here into an actionable plan that you can just go into the gym and execute there are two programs I recommend if your goal is to gain muscle and weight I recommend getting Jeff's fundamentals hypertrophy program it comes with three separate programs for you to use to go from skinny to muscular in your first year of training I've put an affiliate link for it in the description and if your goal is to gain muscle while losing weight I recommend enrolling into my shred smart program in addition to giving you clear training routines threadsmart shows you how to eat to create muscle definition and get six-pack abs I've also linked it in the description thanks again for watching the video and we will see you in the next one