The Smartest Way to Build Muscle, From 7 Top Scientists

Want to learn how to build muscle most effectively? Good news: I’m bringing you exclusive insights from 7 of the world’s smartest hypertrophy scientists. Using their research on muscle growth, I’ll create a step-by-step blueprint that will serve as your ultimate muscle-building hack. Without further ado, here’s the best way to build muscle.

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So, when it comes to how to build muscle, the first piece of the puzzle is exercise selection. Dr. Mike Israetel provided his insight. He says the number of exercises to build muscle you should have in your plan for muscle growth is something like 2 to 4 per muscle. He also emphasizes that you shouldn’t change exercises every week. Instead, you should only switch things up if your exercise is hurting your joints, it's boring you, et cetera, and there are other good candidates around.

Dr. Brad Schoenfeld then came in to explain volume and frequency. On the number of sets needed to optimize hypertrophy: it’s somewhere in the range of 10-20 sets per muscle group weekly. However, there may be a benefit to specialization cycles where high volumes can be beneficial for a given muscle group. Beginners should not be focusing on volume for hypertrophy. The first several months should just be focused on learning your movement patterns and very basic type routines. There does seem to be a modest hypertrophy benefit in training a muscle more than once a week when you exceed 8 to 10 sets per muscle or more per week. Brad recommends an upper lower split.

As for how heavy you should lift and the rep range you should use to build muscle, Daniel Plotkin says that for most people, between 5 and 15 reps, which is usually a moderate load. Then, during each set, apply a progressive overload technique called double progression. This is where you focus on increasing your reps before adding more weight. For example, if you can do 8 reps with a certain amount of weight, aim to do more reps with that same weight the following week. Keep going until you get to 12 reps per set, which is when you should you consider adding a small amount of weight, continuing the process.

And on whether training to failure is truly the best way to gain muscle, Josh says although training to failure may lead to more growth when you look at just 1 set in isolation, it also creates more fatigue. That’s why he recommends training 2 to 3 reps in reserve for all your sets except for the last set, where you'd just take it all the way to failure.

Dr. Milo Wolf then shares a hypertrophy hack: lengthened partials, which seem to produce more, or at the very least, the same amount of hypertrophy than a full range of motion. He recommends instead of doing a full range of motion on a given exercise, try using about 50% or about half reps in that lengthened position.

Now, it’s time to learn more about the other half of the how to build muscle equation, nutrition. Dr. Eric Helms explains calorie intake. Basically, you want to scale your calorie surplus and your rate of weight gain to your experience level. So if you're a beginner, gaining 2% of your body weight per month, which would roughly track with that 300 to 500 calorie surplus is a good idea. And then if you're an intermediate, probably something closer to 1% of your body weight per month is a decent target. That's probably gonna be between the 200 to 300 calorie surplus.And then if you are advanced, we're probably talking a 100 to 200 calorie surplus at most and gaining like 0.5 to 1% of their body weight per month.

Finally, Alan Aragon explains protein intake. Here’s what he says: of first importance, get total daily protein straight, which is 0.7 to 1.0 g/lb bodyweight, that's the cake. For the icing on the cake, spread it out relatively evenly over a minimum of 3 protein doses over the course of the day. As for the best protein sources, Alan recommends getting a mix of protein sources throughout the day.

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - The 7 Scientists
0:55 - Best Exercises
6:04 - Best Workout Splits
8:33 - How Heavy to Lift
10:40 - How Hard to Train
13:33 - New Growth Hack
16:06 - Nutrition (CALORIES)
18:56 - Nutrition (PROTEIN)
22:19 - Full Workout Routine

[Benjamin.N.]

I think this could be THE BEST video in the entire fitness industry, with all these experts' knowledge and studies they did. Respect.

[markor]

This is it, the only video anyone trying to gain muscle mass needs to watch to get the gist in terms of strategy. Well done man!

[donald]

I’m a physician and found your video the best (science backed) I have seen on the internet regarding muscle growth and exercise physiology. And having done medical research in the past, I appreciated the hard work and diligence you put into it. Great work!

[vamofucile]

You really outdid yourself with this one Jeremy.
You actually covered all the bases, I'm gonna keep this as a guide and show it to anyone who wants to get into fitness.
Keep it up 💪

[nezdfep]

It's hard to grasp how immensely valuable this content actually is. Thank you for making it openly available Jeremy.

[whateveritwasitis]

My dude has been doing the best videos since day 1, and he's not hacking or selling anything! to you- a big Thank You.

[dumalecc]

honestly, i cant believe a video like this is out here for free. not only is this really high quality, in-depth, and organized—but its extremely digestible for all experience levels looking for answers. you are a treasure Jeremy 🙏

[franksantana]

The best summary for people who are trying to get in shape. Lots of pearls condense in only a couple of minutes. Well done.

[notsoanonymous]

Dr. Mike is great. “What kind of channel are you running, followers with no calves!?” lol

[pemadamdul]

As a beginner, this is one-stop shop to know everything I need for at least the next 6 months of my journey, laying a solid foundation for understanding the basics of the muscle-building process. Huge appreciation!

[joshdechane]

This video is literally everything people need to hear all in one video. Thank you Jeremy all your videos have helped me out!!

[Mattfitzzz]

Man just put everything everyone needs to know to have a 10/10 physique in just over 20mins, what a video.

[doughjoe]

After watching this, my lean muscle mass tripled

[thisistheslam]

I adopt a best of both worlds approach. I will lift heavier and focus on something like a 5x5 or a 6x3 set for upper and lower one day each, then focus more on hypertrophy and do a 5x10-15 for the other day, assuming a 4-day split. It forces the body, if I’m not mistaken, to respond to intense stimulus from load AND volume and allows you to get tons of volume to push muscle growth while also making you stronger. If you don’t include closer to max strength reps in your program your ability to progress will be greatly slowed. That’s assuming you’re not a novice lifter. And a Mon/Tue/Th/Fri is probably the best 4-day split you can target because it gives you a 72 hour recovery window for the muscle groups you work, meaning you can still train pretty hard each time because you’re not weakened from a more recent lifting day. Of course, 48 hours is adequate for many to retrain a muscle group but some may not progress much faster as a result and definitely won’t be able to reliably push closer to max load reps.

[charlottebentz]

I would love more research focused on females and lifting. All the research is super helpful regardless but some of the studies mentioned here only studied men and won’t be as applicable to women in training.

[andynguyen]

This is the best video to summarize everything an overweight noobie as myself, (235lbs and no weight training experience at all) in both nutrition and in technique. Followed this video as best as possible, Im down to 177 lbs and I'm still getting noobie gains. Still learning more movements. I can't believe how much I've changed in a half of a year. Amazing content!

[Alexandrius_Caesar]

I know how arduous it is to coordinate all of these interviews and decide which questions to ask in order to garner the most pertinent information. Big ups to you, Jeremy. The knowledge you’ve extracted and compiled for us is invaluable. Thank you very, very much.

[GraemeMalt]

Iv been training for many yrs on and off. There's so much false information on multimedia. I.e. influences saying this is how to get fast and best results. But actually they neglect to tell you there loaded up on gear.It's nice and refreshing to see some actual helpfull content.
Thank you

[Seyekoepath]

I have to say, this is probably the best video that you have ever done. Covered everything, plus small breakdowns of the "why". Love it!

[walidcless]

Just came back to gym after 5 years of rest ( getting married and having kids 😅 ), and glad I stomped into your videos, by far, the most scientific based useful fitness channel on the platform!Thx Jeremy ❤