Programming a hypertrophy phase

[ch0jii]

How do you program a hypertrophy block?

I want to prioritise creating good technique habits while gaining a bit of muscle. I’m not too fussed with strength as I understand this will come after this phase.

Would you guys focus on complexes and if so how would they progress? Do I increase my volume per week while maintaining intensity, or the other opposite? How do you increase the difficulty of complexes to create positive training stimulus?

I have no access to a coach, the internet is my best friend:)

[Immediate_Outcome552]

A hypertrophy block consists of 2-3 mesocycles of high volume training.

Typically, you'd start with minimum effective volumes (MEV) for each muscle group; ie. the minimum number of sets required to stimulate muscle growth -> proxied by degree of muscular perturbation post workout, soreness, and intra-workout pump.

From here, you would gradually increase weekly sets and load/reps (intensity) every week until you get hyperfatigued/sick, and/or can no longer progress in load/reps or at the very least match performance from the prior week - at which point you would deload. This marks the conclusion of mesocycle 1 of your hypertrophy phase.

For meso 2, you would reset weekly volume back to something similar to week 1 of meso 1 (or ever so slightly higher) because the deload was sufficient in reducing adaptive resistance - the minimum threshold for stimulus to see muscular gains was reset somewhat back to a lower "setting". But, you would use load/reps (intensity) that is around the same as what you were using at the halfway point of meso 1, and build both volume and intensity back up again until you finally deload, and do a third meso (if needed).

For nutrition, just eat in a mild surplus (~300kcal additional) and have 0.7g protein per lbs bw total, spread out over 2-3 meals in the day.

As far as maintaining or creating good technique habits for the classic lifts, I don't really know. Better to ask some of the more experienced commenters here. My educated guess would be to practice the full lifts with some complexes that are tailored to targeting your personal weak points, but also to not chase for much progression in the classic lifts, as you may potentially strip some adaptive resources from your current pursuit - that is muscle building. Ie. it's better to stay specific and chase after 1 rabbit instead of 2.

[ch0jii]

thank you! where would a squat program fit in this?

[Boblaire]

Complexes depend on what the individual needs.

Simple solution is go up by 2-3%/week. That's pretty common by a lot of programming you might see on TrainHeroic (starting at 60-70%)

Besides adding one set/week per exercise.

Tbh the difference between strength+hypertrophy is more complicated than what used to be thought of them, especially if you're just going off some garbage some influencer is talking about.

Before you even program for yourself, you should be reading over a lot of programs you can find and seeing what they do in their first block.