Hypertrophy

Hypertrophy is a phenomenon known that decreases your body fat percentage and at the same time changes your body composition. You can also call it gaining muscle and losing body fat. During this process, you will increase your resting metabolic rate. Muscle burns more energy at rest than fat does and this is known as resting metabolic rate. With the increase of this metabolic rate, you'll be able to burn more calories every day.

However, many women believe that hypertrophy happens quickly and easily. The truth is that gaining significant amount of muscle mass as a woman is hard. You will need to lift challenging weight and will need to exercise regularly to make more muscle. You'll also need some amount of testosterone to get bulky gains.

What people believe

Traditionally it has been said that women should do cardio and lift lightweights and the men should lift heavy things. However, this is not true. As a woman, you'll be able to gain more muscle by lifting heavy and you can lift heavy, even as a woman.

If you only want to tone your body, then it's easy for you. When you start strength training, your body will start to get some muscle from your training and diet. Toning is simply adding some muscle but not a lot of muscle.

You will need a complete program to gain more muscle. It does not only include weight training, but will also need you focus on your diet.

Hypertrophy training for women

If you are a woman and you want hypertrophy training to gain more muscle and toning, lifting in the 6 to 12 rep range is best for you, according to experts. However, before that you need to build a solid foundation of strength. If you stronger, you'll be able to lift more weight and perform more repetitions. That will help you to gain more lean mass. If you perform large, compound movements like squats and deadlifts, it will help you to build a foundation of strength which will help you in achieving better results from your hypertrophy training.

When you want to build more muscle, you can go for hypertrophy workout for four day split. There you can do two heavy days which will help you to build strength and you can do two repetitions focused days which will help you to add more muscle to your body. You will need at least 4 to 6 weeks for optimal hypertrophy.

There are many advanced techniques available which can help you to push boundaries. Like focusing on the eccentric and concentric phases. We are generally stronger in the eccentric or lowering phase of an exercise in comparison to the concentric or lifting phase. If you slow down during the negative rep that will increase the time under tension. It will definitely help you to add more muscle to your body. You can also go for drop sets during your hypertrophy training. In case of drop sets you perform reps to failure and then reduce the weight and continue the set. This will also increase time under tension and will work on both your fast and slow twitch muscle fibres. That will help you to increase your muscle mass more in comparison to traditional workouts.

References 1. The Bigness Project
2. The mechanisms of muscle hypertrophy and their application to resistance training
3. Protein timing and its effects on muscular hypertrophy and strength in individuals engaged in weight-training