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When it comes to muscle building, I’ve heard many views on the best times and ways to train. The question I want to answer is: can there be multiple answers or is there a science based approach?

When it comes to the literature the science is clear, muscle building or specifically muscle protein synthesis (MPS), has a few factors that affect it. We have previously discussed the importance of protein and though an important party of MPS we will focus on the one most important factor and that is the volume of training. This is the difference between doing one pushup compared to doing ten pushups, you need to provide enough stimulus for your body to respond and subsequently build muscle in order to adapt. Below you will see a visual of the dose dependent response of hypertrophy (an indirect measure of MPS) (Schoenfeld, 2020).

Without addressing in too much detail what optimal volume looks like, it does fall between overtraining and not training enough. The second factor that affects MPS is training frequency, this intuitively makes sense. The more often you train the stronger you get, this is because of its effect on volume. Ultimately the many different views on when to train and how hard, come back to finding a balance that increases your total volume while avoiding injury. A moderate exercise that can be repeated easily and has a low recovery cost can outperform an intense grueling maximum effort exercise that takes weeks to heal from. Hopefully I’ve given you a little bit more information to inform you on your exercise practices when it comes to building muscle.

If you want the long version and to hear the author and researcher behind the study referenced, you can view many of his videos on youtube or read more of his papers: here is a video where you can find him discussing topic of MPS.

References: Shoenfeld, B.J. 2020. Science and Development of Muscle Hypertrophy, Second Edition.