Thoughts on hypertrophy

Hypertrophy forms an important part of my training cycle; it is the foundation for the rest. My current view based on Steve Dunning’s thought below is that you should be looking to do 25 second hands on your chosen grips. He suggests that “the principles of strength training with regards to static (isometric) contractions is very different from that of concentric and eccentric contractions. The duration of a static contraction in order to achieve the required overload for an increase in strength is in the region of 25-30sec, according to the majority of reliable research”. To date I have only completed 2 hypertrophy cycles and am still learning.

I currently include only the following grips as they form the basis for everything – Front 2, Middle 2 and Back 2 (For the last cycles I have used the medium Beastmaker pockets for F2 and M2 and the big back 2 pockets for B2). Steve Dunning suggest doing between 2 to 5 repetitions per grip. At present I do only 2 repetitions for each grip with a 3 minute rest in between which feels sufficiently taxing but will need to reassess this for my next cycle. Given that hypertrophy is more about building a foundation my thought is that it is better to add more repetitions than to use smaller grips to build intensity at this stage.