Home Hypertrophy Program: 6 Steps to Maximize Muscle Growth

This is the complete guide to putting together an effective home hypertrophy program.

So, if you're looking for:

• Good exercises
• Useful progression schemes
• Effective workout programs
• Ways to build muscle in the comfort of your home

You'll love this guide. Without further ado, let's dive in.

An Effective Home Hypertrophy Program: Myth Or Reality?

Prevailing wisdom suggests that we need to perform a specific set of gym exercises in a particular order to build muscle and get stronger. But one thing this pandemic has shown us is that we can have effective workouts without a gym.

Countless individuals worldwide are strong and muscular despite never stepping inside a gym. Why is that? Because our muscles understand and respond to tension and stress. How we provide these two things doesn't matter as much.

Farmers, gymnasts, calisthenic athletes, cyclists, and many other people are decently muscular and quite strong, despite not doing traditional exercises like the bench press.

What does this mean for you?

Most notably, it means that the gym isn't the only place where you can build impressive amounts of muscle mass and strength. Of course, if that's what you love doing, by all means, don't stop. I certainly love the gym. But if you enjoy home training, this is your license to train as you see fit and enjoy the process thoroughly. 

The Number One Requirement For Effective Home Training

A home hypertrophy program often means training without equipment. When comparing that to the vast array of weights and machines in a gym, we can easily conclude that we can't train as effectively. And this is true in many cases, but not because home training is inherently flawed.

First, many people expect home workouts to be ineffective, so they are. Approaching things with the right mindset impacts your motivation, enthusiasm, and the effort you put into it. Second, and let's be frank here, many home workouts aren't that good. They leverage bad structures and movements that can't possibly result in significant growth.

And third - a reason I consider to contribute significantly to the general ineffectiveness of home training - is effort. Many people find it challenging to get into the mindset for hard training at home and often find themselves:

• Training inconsistently
• Cutting their workouts short
• Not putting as much effort

But do you know what one factor brings everything together and transforms a bad workout program into a decent one? Effort. That's right, placing more stress on your muscles is a fantastic way to get more out of your workouts.

Regardless if you're training with a range of equipment in a gym or are awkwardly looking for ways to leverage your body weight at home, effort is at the center of progress. Research shows that leveraging lighter weights and doing bodyweight exercises can lead to impressive strength and muscle progress (1).

But for us to reap these benefits, we need to work hard. A paper from 2015 by Schoenfeld and colleagues illustrates that high-load and low-load training cause similar muscle growth, so long as we take sets close to failure (2).

Of course, this is simple, but certainly not easy. Taking sets close to failure is quite uncomfortable, especially when training in a high repetition range. It's difficult, so many people give up way before they're close.

The problem is, gauging how close you are to failure is difficult when doing 20, 30, or even 40 repetitions. You might feel like you're at your limit. But, if you push yourself hard enough, you might find that you have an extra five to ten repetitions in you.

A Brief Note On Intensity

None of what I've written above should suggest that you should do tons of repetitions with light weights. There seems to be a minimum intensity threshold we need to cover if we want to build muscle - around 30 to 40 percent of one-repetition maximum (1). For instance, if your best bench press is 300 pounds, 30 percent would mean doing sets with 90 pounds. Of course, it's easier to calculate this when using weights, but what about bodyweight movements?

Well, I recommend keeping it safe by limiting yourself to no more than 40 good repetitions. If you can do that many without getting close to failure, you should find ways to challenge yourself - more on that next up. You want your weight training to remain a muscle-building activity, not turn into a cardio session.

Home Hypertrophy Program: Start Growing In 6 Easy Steps

1. Get Clear On Your Goals

Your training should reflect your goals. For instance, if you want to lose fat, you shouldn't do too much training volume. Do fewer sets and fewer isolation exercises, and train three to four times per week. Focus on maintaining or improving your performance, keep a deficit, get enough protein, and let time do its thing.

In contrast, if you want to gain muscle and strength, do more work: more sets, exercises, and weekly workouts. Do more exercises, maintain a small surplus, get plenty of protein, and be patient.

Once you're clear on which path you want to take for the foreseeable future, move to the following steps.

2. Determine How Often You'd Like to Train

The great thing about home training is that you have a lot more flexibility for planning your training weeks. Thanks to the convenience, you can choose to have shorter and more frequent sessions or longer and less frequent ones.

Research finds a strong correlation between training volume and muscle growth (3). Studies suggest we should do at least ten sets per muscle group every week. Studies also find that training our muscles twice per week might be slightly better than just once (4).

So, given these two rules, we can pick how often we'd like to train, on what days, and how to pair different muscle groups. For instance, a 4-day upper/lower split:

You can do a bit more volume per workout, given that you're training with an average frequency. You can also pick a 6-day push/pull/legs split:

Given the higher frequency, you can have shorter workouts and still hit your volume goals.

3. See What You Can Work With

The next important thing to consider is what available equipment you have. Bands, dumbbells, weight plates, a pull-up bar, and such. Round it up because this will help you in the following two steps.

If you don't have much or any equipment, don't worry. I'll give you practical recommendations for minimalistic training below.

4. Pick The Exercises You Want To Do

Keep this list short and concise. The simpler you keep things, the better your focus and results. I recommend having one to two movements for your smaller muscle groups and two to three for the larger ones. Here is what this looks like:

• Chest, shoulders, and triceps - your pushing muscles
• Back and biceps - your pulling muscles
• Core - the central group of muscles that links your upper and lower body
• Quadriceps - the large muscle group, situated at the front side of your thighs
• Hamstrings and glutes - the posterior musculature located at the back of your upper legs

If you're particularly thorough, you can also include work for your forearms, grip strength, and calves.

Here are some ideas of compound movements you can do. These will do a great job of targeting one muscle group and involving other, smaller ones.

• Chest, shoulders, and triceps - push-ups, decline push-ups, pike push-ups, and chair dips
• Back and biceps - inverted rows, pull-ups/chin-ups, dumbbell rows, and suitcase rows
• Core - planks, dead bug, and single-arm suitcase carry
• Quadriceps - single-leg squat, Bulgarian split squats, lunges, step-ups, and jump squats
• Hamstrings and glutes - slick floor bridge curls, glute bridges, step-ups, and donkey kicks

5. Put Together Your Workouts

Once you've determined how often you want to train, what equipment you can use, and which movements you want to do, the next step is to put together your workouts. For instance, let's say that you want to use an upper/lower split and have four weekly workouts. You also have a pair of dumbbells, some resistance bands, a pull-up bar, and a suitcase and backpack you can fill up with different objects for resistance.

Let's also say that you've picked the following movements you want to do:

• Chest - decline push-ups, classic push-ups, and band chest flyes
• Shoulders - pike push-ups, lateral dumbbell raises, and band face pulls
• Triceps - chair dips and overhead dumbbell extensions
• Back - chin-ups, inverted rows, and suitcase rows
• Biceps - standing dumbbell bicep curls
• Core - plank and dead bug
• Quadriceps - single-leg squats and Bulgarian split squats
• Hamstrings and glutes - slick floor bridge curls and glute bridges
• Calves - standing unilateral calf raises (for instance, on stairs at home)

So, here is how it might look like:

Upper 1 (e.g., Monday)

Lower 1 (e.g., Tuesday)

Upper 2 (e.g., Thursday)

Lower 2 (e.g., Friday)

It's also worth noting that you might want to start with less volume and fewer exercises at first. Monitor your progress, determine if you're doing enough work to grow and get stronger, and only add more sets or exercises if you feel the need. This is also an excellent way to establish a sustainable plan and not overwhelm yourself from the start.

6. Write It Down And Track Your Progress

You've done all of the necessary planning, so the hard part is almost over. Now, all you need to do is take a simple notebook or journal, write your workouts in, and get started. I recommend writing:

• The exercise
• The number of sets you'll be doing
• How many reps you manage to get
• Nuances like equipment used, extra weight (such as wearing a backpack on a push-up), and similar

This is actionable data you can look at to determine how things are going. For instance, if you notice your performance stagnating for several weeks, it could indicate that something needs to improve. You might not be eating enough calories, your sleep could need improvement, or the problem could relate to good old effort.

Once I finish a training week, I sit down for about fifteen minutes to write down each workout in my notebook. I then revisit each note, change the date, adjust loads on some exercises, and I'm done setting up for the upcoming week.

Six Unique Ways to Progress With Your Home Training

So far, so good. We've gone over how to put together an effective home hypertrophy program. But what about progression? Without it, we wouldn't be training but merely exercising.

The good news is, there are many ways to adjust the difficulty of your home program for the best results. Here are six unique tactics:

1. Use Resistance Bands

Adding resistance bands to some exercises is a great way to make them more challenging. For instance, grab a band, step over it, and do Bulgarian split squats. Or, wrap a band over your hands and behind your back to make the classic exercise more challenging.

Alternatively, you can substitute some movements for banded exercises for an extra challenge. If you don't have dumbbells heavy enough for bicep curls, tricep extensions, or lateral raises, do them with a resistance band instead.

2. Add Weight

Adding weight to the equation is an obvious way to make an exercise more challenging. Granted, you won't have as many options for this at home, but you can still make it work. For instance, a great way to achieve overload is to fill up an old backpack with heavy objects like books, put it on your back, and do movements like push-ups, inverted rows, chin-ups, and squats.

3. Do More Work

Since training volume is tightly correlated with muscle growth, a fantastic way to make our home training more effective is to do more (3). Specifically, doing more sets and reps can be a great way to keep progress consistent.

For example, if a bodyweight movement doesn't challenge you that much, do more repetitions. As we discussed above, going north of 30 repetitions can still be effective, so long as you push yourself near failure (1).

Alternatively, why not do more sets? Instead of doing three sets, do four. Add a set to half of the movements you do, and you'll quickly find yourself overloading your muscles.

4. Do More Challenging Exercises

I'm always baffled when people tell me they don't train at home because the exercises are too easy. What? Too easy? Bodyweight training is anything but easy if you know how to pick challenging movements.

In fact, this is the beauty of training: having the ability to pick from hundreds of fantastic exercises depending on your fitness level. For example, if classic push-ups feel too easy, why not do decline push-ups? Or weighted push-ups? Or single-arm push-ups? Or uneven push-ups? If traditional squats are too easy, do single-leg squats.

With a bit of thought and research, you can always find a slightly more challenging exercise to kick your butt and cause overload.

5. Do Unilateral Versions (One Side At a Time)

Unilateral training should be part of your training in any case because it reinforces core activation and prevents side-to-side muscle imbalances from occurring. You can also use it as an overloading strategy.

Getting back to our example of the squat, should the standard version become too easy, hold onto something for balance and do single-legged squats. Push-ups too easy? Do single-arm push-ups. Glute bridges making you yawn out of boredom? Do single-legged glute bridges.

Chances are, you can find a unilateral movement that will challenge you enough to grow. And hey, if you ever start doing 30 to 40 repetitions of single-arm push-ups, you can be that your chest will look incredible.

6. Use Different Angles

Changing the angle of your body is another good way to cause overload. This works great for movements like inverted rows and push-up variations. For example, you can start doing inverted rows from an almost upright position and gradually make your body more horizontal as you build back strength.

Another example is the pike push-up. You can start with the classic version and gradually elevate your feet on a few books, then a chair, and finally a kitchen countertop. With each elevation, you will overload your shoulders more.

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