Hypertrophy: The Few Principles That Actually Drive Muscle Growth (And the Surprisingly Short List of Things That Don't)

Summary

Muscle growth runs on a **short list of real drivers** — mechanical tension as the primary stimulus, enough hard weekly volume (to a point, with diminishing returns), training effort near failure, and progressive overload — and an almost-as-short list of **discredited myths** (soreness equals growth, muscle confusion, the narrow post-workout anabolic window, light-versus-heavy mattering once effort is matched); the honest move is to tell users the real levers plainly while refusing to launder the influencer scene's over-precise set-numbers and reps-in-reserve prescriptions into a certainty tha