I’ve been thinking about changing my GS&C2 to become more hypertrophy focused. I’m stuck in basically every movement in GS&C2 and would like to try a more hypertrophy focused program. I have PB3 and have done it (several times) before, but I like how GS&C2 weaves in the GPP more naturally than PB3 with a greater focus on cardio. Only have to come in 4 days a week instead of 5 for GPP. Basically shifting the focus from both strength and size to just size. Reading BBM’s article and other forum posts seems to suggest to just increase the amount of prescribed reps. Any thoughts or suggestions for this?
When I think about shifting priority from maximal strength to maximal hypertrophy, here are the changes I think about programming-wise:
- Reduced exposure to sets less than ~ 5 reps. While these can and do provide some stimulus for muscle growth, I think their principle objective is strength development and the typical use case is for the Big Three (or Four), where that rep range likely produces a bit more fatigue.
- More exposure to isolation exercises that are closer to failure
- More exposure to non-barbell exercises
I think that’s a good starting point, though admittedly there’s a lot of overlap between strength/size programming seen in the General Strength and Conditioning templates vs size-only. I think you could change the exercises you’re doing without changing anything else and see similar hypertrophy outcomes.
-Jordan
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