Technique for Rapid Muscle Gain

So, you have three months to gain as much muscle (or strength) as possible. What do you do? This is a great question I was recently asked by a younger subscriber who was being bullied at school and wanted to bulk up quickly over the summer to protect himself. Well, there's a technique I heard about a decade ago, but it has since been proven more effective with a wealth of scientific literature.

This technique greatly reduces myostatin ⁴, which is a gene which limits muscle growth potential ⁵, thus inhibiting it allows for more muscle growth. It upregulates myogenic stem cells ⁶  satellite cells and increases myonuclei content of muscle cells ⁴,¹¹ in fact there were substantial increases in satellite cell number and myonuclei after just seven sessions of either short-term high-frequency failure or non-failure blood flow restriction training ⁴.

Blood Flow Restriction Training

Occlusion training resulted in greater improvements in bench press, squat, maximum sprint time, and leg power compared to regular training over a three-week period ³ . It results in a systemic effect, as evidenced by improvements to bench press occurring just from implementing this training method into a lower body exercise ³ .

In another study, 29 physically active male college students underwent low-intensity resistance training, low-intensity resistance training with moderate BFR, or high-intensity resistance exercise for 8 weeks. The moderate resistance training with blood flow restriction worked just as well as the high-intensity group, and both of these groups also had reduced myostatin and higher levels of GASP-1 and SMAD-7 gene expression ⁸.

Implementing Bloodflow Restriction Training

In order to implement blood flow restriction training you need to get some cuffs or bands. You can find these anywhere online including amazon and I wouldn't personally pay a lot of money for anything fancy, since they all work. You place the band on the location of your choice, perform a set of an exercise, then remove the band. Here is what it looks like:

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And here is a general protocol based on what’s been found to be effective in the literature for muscle hypertrophy and strength. 

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Be careful not to overtrain

BFR training resulted in greater responses compared to longer periods of heavy-load strength training without BFR ⁴. Both non-failure and failure protocols induced a temporary overtraining effect, with muscle strength temporarily decreasing after the first week, especially in the failure protocol ⁴. However, there was a late supercompensation in strength observed 10-20 days after the last training session ⁴.

Another study demonstrated that recovery adaptations were occurring after 10 days of rest following two 5-day block cycles consisting of 7 sessions of BFR training, with strength peaking after 20 days of rest ¹⁰.

Considering the temporary overtraining effect and delayed recovery response associated with BFR training, incorporating it cyclically, such as for one week each month, could be a great approach to optimize its benefits while minimizing the risk of overtraining .

Conclusion:

While BFR training is a great technique and proven to work, it's important not to overuse it. Additionally, I have discovered another training method that can lead to significant gains in muscle mass, strength, and endurance. Based on the results from one study, the effects of this method appear to surpass those of blood flow restriction training. I include this technique in our ultimate performance and endurance course.

Unleash Your Vigor and Conquer Your Limits!

Brenden Henry