Hey guys,

This week, I wanted to share with you a few tips that I took from Bret Contrera’s Book ‘Glute Lab’. For more details on this book, check out my review . Today, I go over Chapter 8 of his book titled ‘How Muscle Grows’.

I really highly recommend this book because it is highly packed with information and you can always revisit it to enhance your knowledge on hypetrophy. For those of you who do not have the book, I summarized a few of the techniques that Bret recommends for muscle growth.

Bret divides muscle growth components into three parts: mechanical tension, metabolic stress and muscle damage. He also goes into great depth about the types of muscle fibers (type I and type II) found in the glutes and enhances knowledge of how individual differences in peoples’ gluteus make-up can alter response to training.

This further reinforces how crucial it is to only compare your glutes growth to yesterday’s size and not someone elses’. Once again, the muscles’ makeup is unique. Furthermore, Bret outlines the three type of muscle movements: eccentric, concentric and isometric. The way he makes this very scientific subject quite approachable is impressive!

The chapter essentially also outlines a few more important points which I will list here:

-According to Bret Contreras, perform the exercise close to muscle failure to increase muscle size. 

-Aim do stimulating (he defines them as effective/hypertrophic) reps. He gives the point of reference of at least 5 reps of a set until failure to demonstrate the effect of stimulating reps.

-He recommends training the glutes at least three times a week for development.

I hope that you enjoyed this blog post on Bret Contereras’ glutes bible ‘Glute lab’, let me know what you thought of it in the comments below!