11 Different Types Of Training For Muscle Growth (And When To Use Each)

Building muscle is a common fitness goal worldwide. Step into any gym and you’ll see people lifting weights for hours on end, looking into their favorite mirror. However, stop to look and you’ll quickly notice that most are performing different types of training for muscle growth.

With so many different training types to choose from, it’s hard to know which to use to maximize your results. Understanding the key differences between the main training types and what they can offer is essential for efficient training. It will allow you to assess the different benefits and plan your training accordingly.

In this article, we’ve discussed 11 of the main training types for muscle growth. We’ve also described some advanced muscle-building techniques that can be implemented within these.

11 Training Types For Muscle Growth

These 11 common training styles for natural lifters and advanced athletes can be used to enhance your exercise routine. These include different types of strength training and hypertrophy training. Whether you’re learning how to bulk or exploring other fitness goals, each of them is worth considering.

Hypertrophy Training

Hypertrophy, or muscle growth, is defined as an increase in the size of the muscle cells. A suitable exercise stimulus causes micro tears in the muscle. This signals the body to grow them back bigger and stronger for the next exercise bout.

Hypertrophy training primarily focuses on increasing muscle size. This is typically done using high-volume training at a moderate intensity, with short rest periods of around 45–60 seconds.

Hypertrophy program guidelines suggest using 8–12 repetitions per set at an intensity of 60%–80% of your one repetition maximum. 

Your one repetition maximum can be worked out manually or by using our 1RM calculator. This is the maximum amount of weight you can lift for one repetition.

Hypertrophy training methods focus on the progressive overload principle by increasing your workout volume. This means that you’ll increase the amount of work you perform throughout your training weeks to promote an adaptive response. Your total weekly training volume is a key driver of muscle growth.

This training type is ideal for bodybuilders, recreational gym goers, and physique athletes. Use it alongside the best supplements for muscle growth for maximum results. You can apply it to any type of resistance exercise, making it great for all ability levels.

Strength Training

Strength refers to the ability to produce maximal force against external resistance. Strength training is an exercise type specifically designed to increase your maximal force production and level of strength.

Strength sessions typically use lower repetition ranges (1–5) at approximately 80%–100% of your 1RM. Longer rest periods of around 3–5 minutes should be taken to allow full muscle recovery. 

This is another type of progressive overload training, but more focused on training intensity over training volume. We see this as one of the key differences between strength vs hypertrophy training.

Strength training builds the foundation needed to lift heavier weights with consistent application. It’s well-suited to strength athletes, powerlifters, and bodybuilders who want to improve their strength level. 

It enhances hypertrophy training by allowing you to use heavier weights during the muscle-building process. You can use it as part of a bulking workout plan if you’re looking to maximize your gym performance.

Resistance Training

Resistance training for muscle growth is a general training type that involves working against external resistance. It can be used for several exercise goals, including hypertrophy, strength, and fitness. 

It’s seen as the foundation of successful muscle growth as it provides the stimulus needed for the body’s adaptive responses to take place. For further guidance, read our article on how to gain muscle.

Common ways to resistance train include using machines, free weights, bodyweight exercises, and resistance bands. These exercise types can be tailored to specific workout goals by changing the intensity and volume of your training.

You can split resistance exercises into concentric vs eccentric training, which are the two distinct phases when your muscles contract. The concentric training phase happens when your muscle contracts, or gets shorter. The eccentric phases happen when your muscles lengthen, or get longer.

Compound Vs. Isolation Training

Resistance exercises can be split into compound movements or isolation movements. Both have specific benefits and applications that determine how they should be applied to your training. 

Compound training focuses on large movements that engage several muscle groups at one time. Common examples include squats, deadlifts, and bench presses. This is typically used for efficient strength-based training and as part of most hypertrophy routines.

Isolation training uses smaller movements that focus on a primary mover. This means a certain muscle group is responsible for most of the work. Examples include bicep curls and tricep pushdowns.

Isolation training is ideal if you want to focus on a specific muscle group. It allows you to address muscular imbalances and improve the overall flow of your physique, reducing potential injury risk. In a year, injuries occur in 4.5% of men and 0.6% of women who engage in weight training.

With isolation vs compound exercises, most programs should use a mixture of compound and isolation training for well-rounded development. Compound training should be performed at the start of your workout, followed by the isolation movements.

Push-Pull-Legs (PPL) Training

A push pull legs workout, or PPL training method, requires you to organize your training in three main movement patterns. These are push (chest, shoulders), pull (back, biceps), and legs (quads, hamstrings, glutes, and calves). This is one of the common split training routines performed by recreational gym goers, bodybuilders, and advanced athletes.

Using a PPL training method offers balanced muscular development while allowing adequate muscle recovery. Even when using a higher training frequency, it ensures at least 48 hours of recovery between working the same muscle groups. This makes it ideal for advanced lifters who already have built a solid training foundation using full-body training.

Furthermore, the PPL training split gives increased workout flexibility, allowing you to adjust your workout frequency depending on your availability. Use it if you’re looking to build muscle and strength while maximizing your recovery and performance.

Upper/Lower Body Training 

An upper lower split means that you alternate your workout sessions between your upper body and lower body. This is typically done using four weekly sessions, meaning you’ll perform two upper-body and two lower-body workouts.

Your upper body training consists of chest, shoulders, arms, and back exercises. Lower body sessions focus on your leg muscles, including your quads, hamstrings, glutes, and calves. Both sessions use mainly compound movements, with some isolation work included towards the end.

Like the PPL training method, an upper lower split helps increase training frequency while ensuring adequate muscle recovery. Because of this, the decision between these training splits largely depends on your preference and weekly schedule.

Using this training split balances hypertrophy, strength, and endurance work for the major muscle groups. The way you program the main training principles determines which one of these you focus on. Because of this, it’s commonly used by bodybuilders, strength athletes, and recreational gym goers.

Whatever your split is, these are some of the best muscle-building stacks to support your training. 

Full-Body Training

A full body workout plan means that you’re training all your major muscle groups within a single session. These include your chest, shoulders, back, arms, and legs. This is the main difference when compared to a body part split workout, which splits the session into muscle groups.

Most full-body training sessions focus on compound exercises such as rows, presses, squats, and deadlifts. You can use free weights vs machines depending on your preferences and available equipment. These work multiple muscle groups at once, and help maximize muscle recruitment and workout volume. 

This makes full-body training ideal for beginners wanting to develop a solid foundation and lifters looking to maximize their time. Advanced lifters and athletes may also use full-body sessions to improve their functional strength. Furthermore, full-body sessions may be better for individuals wanting to lose weight.

Volume Vs. Intensity-Based Training

Training volume and training intensity are two of the main resistance exercise principles. They’re both vital considerations, whether your goal is muscle growth, muscle strength, or both.

Volume-based training focuses on total workload. With this approach, you’ll perform more sets and repetitions to promote muscle breakdown and metabolic stress, both needed for muscle growth. 

Therefore, this is typically used by bodybuilders and physique athletes focusing on hypertrophy. If this is your main training goal, this is our guide on how much protein to build muscle.

Intensity-based training focuses on the difficulty of exercise. This means that training sessions will use heavier loads, often employing the 1RM method to gauge workout intensity. This is much better suited for maximum strength gains while providing a smaller but effective muscle-building stimulus.

You can alternate between volume vs intensity training depending on your training phase. We’ll discuss this more in the periodization training type section below.

Time Under Tension (TUT) Training

The time your muscle works against resistance is known as its time under tension. Time under tension training, or TUT training, focuses on the duration a muscle is being worked during each set. 

This requires you to slow down the concentric (lifting) and eccentric (lowering) phases of your exercises. Use a slower eccentric phase with a slightly faster concentric phase. For example, perform a three-second down phase, followed by a two-second up phase.

The type of training method helps to increase metabolic stress and mechanical tension, both vital for muscle growth. Most TUT training programs use moderate weights, which allow controlled tempos.

Furthermore, this is a great way to improve your mind-muscle connection. This refers to the way you think about the working muscle when resistance training. It’s been identified as a key factor for muscle growth to occur.

Periodization & Phased Training

Periodized training involves splitting your training into distinct phases. This allows you to systematically change the main training variables (volume, intensity, rest) according to your main goal. It helps to optimize exercise performance while reducing the possibility of overtraining. 

Training periodization is often broken down into hypertrophy (moderate weight, high volume) and strength (higher weight, lower volume) phases. Deload weeks are integrated for proper recovery. This is a period where you temporarily reduce the workout volume and intensity. 

Using a periodized training method is great for intermediate and advanced athletes looking to increase high frequency training performance. Common examples of periodized training methods include linear periodization, undulating periodization, and block periodization.

Functional Training

Functional training focuses on real-world movement patterns commonly used during normal exercise and daily activity. Regular functional training for muscle growth is great for improving mobility, stability, and full-body coordination.

Most functional training movements use multiple muscle groups and work through several daily planes of motion. For example, a squat is similar to sitting down or getting up from a sofa. A deadlift can resemble picking a child up off the floor or carrying the shopping.

While functional exercises prioritize function and injury prevention, they also support muscle growth. This is because most of them use compound, dynamic movements that provide a good muscle-building stimulus. The extent of muscle building depends on the training intensity and volume of work performed. 

Functional training is ideal for functional athletes, health-conscious individuals, and anyone looking to improve their movement and mobility.

Other Advanced Muscle-Building Techniques

Once you’ve chosen your training style, these advanced muscle-building techniques can be used to improve your results. The suitability of each one depends on your exercise goals and preferences. We’ll start by looking at drop sets and supersets as two of the most common ones.

Drop Sets

Drop sets require you to perform an exercise till failure or near failure, then immediately reduce the weight and continue. This typically means you should drop around 20%–30% of the initial weight for your next set. You can keep reducing the weight multiple times for the same exercise, taking minimal rest between each drop and set.

This advanced muscle-building technique is an excellent way to increase metabolic stress and training volume. This refers to the accumulation of certain byproducts in a muscle cell and the amount of work performed, respectively. Both are vital aspects of successful muscular hypertrophy.

Using drop sets means you’re able to push your muscles further without requiring heavy weights. They’re a great way to get a bigger muscle pump, which is a temporary increase in muscle size. Furthermore, they’re an effective training method if you have less time to workout.

Drop sets should typically be performed towards the end of your session and at the end of your exercise sets. This allows you to focus on your main compound exercise movements before finishing your session with some higher volume sets.

Supersets

A superset uses a similar concept to a drop set. However, it involves multiple exercises rather than just one. They’re great to use for hypertrophy workouts when your time is limited or you’re looking to increase your training intensity.

To perform a superset, you complete two exercises back-to-back with little or no rest in between. For example, you may do some barbell biceps curls, then immediately transition to tricep pushdowns. This is a popular way to increase training intensity while improving training efficiency. 

Supersets are often performed as part of a cutting workout plan if you have limited gym time. This higher intensity workload means that you require more energy to complete the set. Furthermore, they help improve muscular endurance and, like drop sets, enhance metabolic stress.

These may be used alongside a cutting diet for best results if body recomposition is the main goal. This is the process of losing fat while maintaining as much muscle mass as possible. If you’re wondering how to cut, check out our guide.

Pyramid Sets

Pyramid sets are one of the less common advanced training techniques. However, they’re very effective for muscle growth when they’re correctly applied to your training. 

The pyramid training method requires you to gradually adjust the repetitions and weights across multiple consecutive sets. You can do this using an ascending pyramid or a descending pyramid.

In an ascending pyramid, you start with light weights and high repetitions. As you move to the next set, you increase the weight and reduce the repetitions. 

For a descending pyramid, the opposite is true. Start with heavy weights and low repetitions. Each set, drop the weight and increase the repetitions. Some pyramid routines may also use both methods together.

Pyramid sets are great for applying the principle of progressive overload. Using a broad repetition and weight range combines hypertrophy and strength work, allowing you to improve both.

These are great for compound movements such as deadlifts, squats, and bench presses. These should be performed towards the start of your main session.

Rest-Pause

Rest-pause training is a muscle confusion technique commonly used to build muscle. It requires you to take a set to near failure, rest for 10–20 seconds, then perform more repetitions. This can be repeated several times, forming a single, extended set.

Using this advanced technique helps increase your training volume and time under tension in a shorter period. This allows you to increase your training intensity and push past training plateaus without increasing your workout time. In some cases, it may also help improve your muscular endurance.

These are most suitable for exercises where you’re able to maintain good exercise technique and control throughout. Examples include machine and cable exercises. Perform them towards the end of your training routine to avoid early fatigue.

Conclusion

These 11 different training types offer unique benefits depending on your exercise needs and goals. The key to successful muscle building is understanding how each one works and how it can benefit your training.  

Remember, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to muscle building. It’s important to follow the fundamental training principles and be aware of the muscle growth myths. However, these different training types can be used to enhance your routine once you understand them.

Frequently Asked Questions