Once again, the name of the phase is indicative of the most common uses for the types of training it contains. These workouts focus on the different stimuli for encouraging muscle protein synthesis for adding size to muscle cells (sarcoplasmic hypertrophy) and increasing the number of muscle cells (myofibrillar hypertrophy).
You’ll generally (but not always) be using heavier loads than in metabolic phase workouts, but not quite as heavy as neurological phase workouts.
Some characteristics of this phase are:
- High degree of tension on a per-muscle-fiber basis
- Moderate work-to-rest ratios (less dense than metabolic usually)
- Greater variety of resistance profiles
- Higher number of sets to failure compared to the other two phases (in most cases)
- Requires more calories on-average than the other two phases
A Common Misconception: is that hypertrophy stimuli are ONLY used for muscle gain. Or that you with ONLY train in this phase if your goal is hypertrophy. For the most part, yes this will be the phase you spend the most time in when focusing on adding muscle. However, you will still need to spend some time in other phases either as a de-load for faster overall progress or to potentiate (improve your readiness for) another hypertrophy program.
It is also possible to use certain of the hypertrophy stimuli for fat loss IF the volume and nutrition are managed appropriately. Again, we take care of this for you in the programs we offer with the nutrition calculator and letting you know which hypertrophy phase programs are suitable to use for fat loss.