Hypertrophy Training for Athletes

What is hypertrophy training? (and how to use it for best results)

Hypertrophy Training

Whether your looking at building muscle or becoming more explosive, you have probably heard of the term 'Hypertrophy Training'. put simply, hypertrophy training is a proven method of training for increasing muscle size and strength.

Hypertrophy training aims to put the muscles under stress, causing tiny tears in muscle fibers. Once these fibers are repaired, it results in bigger, stronger muscles. For athletes, this means developing functional strength that improves power, speed and endurance. This training style provides the muscle endurance and power athletes to be able to complete repetitive, high-intensive activities.

Benefits of hypertrophy training

Increased power and strength: Greater muscle mass generally translates to greater power. Improving important explosive movements for athletes, such as sprinting, jumping and changes of direction.

Enhanced muscular endurance: For athletes in particular, hypertrophy training can improve muscle endurance. This allows athletes to maintain high levels of performance longer.

Injury prevention and resilience: Stronger muscles offer better support to bone joints and ligaments. Overall, this reduces the risk of injury for all athletes.

How to do hypertrophy training?

Focus on sport specific muscle groups: The first step to using hypertrophy training, is focusing on the specific muscle groups most essential for your sport. If you are unsure of what muscles these might be, conduct some research prior to training. For basketball this usually looks like a mix of lower body and upper body to improve vertical jump and defence.

Choosing compound movements and functional exercises: Compound movements such as squats, deadlifts, lunges and bench press should form the core of the hypertrophy routine. These exercises, depending on form, work multiple muscle groups that translate directly to sport. Combine these movements with functional, sport-specific movements to create a training program that mirrors your sports specific movements.

Using moderate weight and rep ranges for power and endurance: For athletic hypertrophy, you should be aiming for 3-4 sets of 6-12 reps using moderate to heavy weights. This range is ideal when training to increase muscle and power without heavily fatiguing the body. Gradually, as you get stronger, increase the weights to continue building strength.

Prioritise recovery to avoid overtraining: Recovery is key for all athletes. Since hypertrophy focuses on breaking down muscle fibers, its important to give them to heal.

Hypertrophy training at HPC

At HPC we focus on improving all aspects of an athlete performance. Often this is helping athletes get quicker and more explosive. A portion of achieving this, is building specific muscle groups. This is where we incorporate hypertrophy training into our programs.