Hypertrophy Specific Training (or HST for short)

Okay ladies and gentlemen, I am about to embark on another fun offset journey in my weight lifting... I have been trying to figure out lots of things about bodybuilding, and powerlifting, and in the end, I have come to realize that most of what I have been doing is powerlifting and not getting bigger. Granted, my lifts continue to go up and my strength keeps increasing, but my size is pretty much stuck in one place.

I have to get out of this rut...well, I keep saying that...

So, I stumbled upon the idea of training just for the sake of hypertrophy. Namely, the kind of hypertrophy that promotes size moreso than strength.


Don't get me wrong, one of the main things that I want out of this is strength, but, if I can get a great deal of mass and then pick back up on the strength later, what would that hurt?

The idea of HST is very simple, yet very difficult all at the same time. What makes me say that? Well, let's go over the basics, shall we?

For starters, your training is broken up into 8 week "cycles". Your first 2 weeks are based around 1 set of 15 reps for all of your lifts. Your second 2 weeks should fall somewhere around 20 total reps for each lift, meaning you could break it up into 1 set of 10 and 2 sets of 5, or 2 sets of 10. Basically, that second week is "supposed" to be your 10s week, but you have to be creative and mostly try to get 10 in there somehow. And finally, you hit your 2 weeks of 5s. This is where you are still trying to total 20 reps, however the way that you do it is all up to you. My plan is to do 4 sets of 5. After that, you have a few choices as to what to do with the final 2 weeks, but my plan is to continue with my 5s and see how far I can go with it.

The way that you should ideally split this up is into 3 intense, full body workout days. That way, you give your body plenty of time to recover, and you will be hitting those same body parts 3 times a week.

Another rule of thumb is that you will go up EVERY single time you do another lift. And it takes a bit of math, but it's not OVERLY complicated, especially if you use a RM calculator to figure it out for you. What you want to do is find your max for each of the rep ranges, and that is the number you want to be at by the END of that specified length of time. For example, if your 10 rep max is 140, you should go something like this:

Week 1: 115 120 125
Week 2: 130 135 140

See, simple in its complexity....

Oh well, that is the gist of it. I will be keeping you all updated though on how this ends up working out for me.

In the meantime, lift heavy and eat heavy!