Hypertrophy - the right type!

We have all seen plenty of hypertrophy programmes in our time which had a primary emphasis on getting players/atheletes bigger. Before we discuss the rationale behind getting the players bigger in the first place, there was one common theme with all these programmes, ie body building type of programme design. The question is: is this type of programme warranted in the athlete population? Well, in almost all cases the answer is no. Here is the reason why.

In the athlete world, expression of force is a fundamentally important characteristic. This can be seen in slow velocity high force expression or high velocity low force expression. See the curve below.

Everything under the curve is power, either high load power such as squat cleans (left of curve) or low load power such as a squat jump (right of curve). Traditional bodybuilding does not fit into any part of this curve. Bodybuilding exercises force the athlete to express medium intensity force with high volume. In doing so the athlete is neither improving his/her strength nor his/her ability to express their strength at speed. 

So if an athlete is to hypertrophy train, then what type of hypertrophy should they perform? Research has shown that myofibrillar hypertrophy will have a greater effect on force expression (and thus performance) than sarcoplasmic hypertrophy (bodybuilding hypertrophy).

Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy:

This is the growth of non-contractile tissue and semi-fluid between muscle fibers. This type of growth comes from work in the rep ranges that illicit the most depletion of sarcoplasm. Sets in the 12-20 rep range will induce this type of growth with short recovery times of between 60-75 seconds. While cross sectional area of the muscle increases, there are minimal gains in strength and the density of the muscle fibers per unit actually decreases during training phases exclusively dedicated to sarcoplasmic growth.

Myofibrillar Hypertrphy:

This is an increase in diameter size of the actual contracile mucle fiber. As a result there are greater gains in strength than in sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. This will allow the athltete a greater ability to express force as their muscle cross-sectional area increases. Rep ranges of 8-12 will induce myo hypertrophy with longer recovery times of 90secs-2minutes.

So if you want to get your players bigger, then get them stronger as well by using myofibrillar hypertrophy and not the traditional bodybuilding methods which will have little to small performance gains.