Essentials: Optimal Protocols to Build Strength & Grow Muscles | Dr. Andy Galpin

Galpin calls these non-negotiables for any training program. The first is consistency: his frequent collaborator Dan Garner says 'Consistency beats intensity,' and the literature shows adherence is the number one predictor of physical fitness outcomes. The second is progressive overload, which he calls the biggest mistake people make outside of not doing the work at all.

The third is individualization: personal preference, equipment availability, kettlebells, dumbbells, bands, or body weight all matter as smaller details. The fourth is picking the appropriate target: run some testing to find your biggest limitations and identify where you need to go. If you hit all four, you are in a good spot to balance specificity and variation.

Galpin says the 3-to-5 concept is not something he developed but an easy way to remember a principle that runs across strength and power development. It allows a low-volume easy-to-handle option at one end — three days, three exercises, three sets of three — and a higher-volume version at the other — five days, five exercises, five sets of five. It has been tested in both coaching and scientific realms as productive and easy to follow.

The modifiable variables for strength/power include exercise choice, order, volume, frequency, progression, and intention. Choose compound movements by movement pattern, put the most neurologically demanding exercises first, keep volume around 3–20 sets per workout, and use high intent even if the load is submaximal. Intention can fudge load: even a plank with maximal muscular contraction can help strength production, and strength gains can occur at 50% of one-rep max if you contract as hard as possible.

Galpin gives the minimum as 10 working sets per muscle group per week, the realistic number for intermediate/advanced as 15–20, and for very well-trained people perhaps pushing toward 25, beyond which there is not much research. He shows how achievable this is: one workout with three exercises and three sets of 10 gives nine working sets, nearly the minimum.

The effort variable is the missing piece. He recommends thinking in terms of 'minus two' reps in reserve — stopping when you are within about two reps of failure. Volume only counts if the sets are hard enough to require adaptation.

Galpin says the key to strength cadence is practicing lifting heavier at a faster rate, because intentionally going slower only reduces acceleration. For hypertrophy, the goal is not a functional outcome, so cadence is up to you. You could even use the same cadence as strength training and still get hypertrophy if the other variables are modified appropriately.

If you have limited equipment, slower repetitions can increase time under tension and help you stimulate hypertrophy with less weight or fewer reps. Examples include a five-second eccentric, a two-second pause, and a three-second rise. Rep cadence is a tool for individualizing programs, not the core determinant of whether a program works.

Galpin cites the conjugate model used by elite powerlifters: they keep almost the exact same weekly structure but make a very small change in exercise variation. Wednesday might always be bench day, but one week it is close-grip bench, the next a special type of barbell, the next a slightly different range of motion. This allows enough specificity while still getting enough variation to train heavy consistently.

He says the major mistake is changing exercises entirely way too often. If he had to pick one approach, he says don't change anything for 6 weeks, realistically 10–12 weeks. It takes about three weeks to figure out the groove of an exercise, how well you can load it, what is too much, and how long it takes. Changing before that makes progressive overload nearly impossible.

Galpin says it is important to do some number and combination of bilateral and unilateral exercises. Bilateral means two feet on the ground moving together, like a squat; unilateral means one limb moving at a time, such as a rear-foot elevated split squat, single-leg leg press, single-leg curl, or pistol squat.

This matters for hypertrophy because it reduces the risk of developing imbalances as training continues across months and years. Whether you pick specific implements is more a methods question and a preference question than a concepts question, because all you are trying to do is create a certain insult in the tissue.

Galpin says if you are a lifting junkie with a very consistent schedule, body-part splits are okay. For most people, the concern is that if you isolate a muscle group for one day of the week and something happens that day, you might go another 13 days before training it again. That is really difficult to maintain.

He prefers three days a week of total body because if something happens, you have only missed that body part for 48–72 hours. He also offers a combination: two days a week of whole-body training plus two days a week of a body-part split, which hedges against all risks. The research says frequency doesn't matter much as long as total load and proximity to failure are equivalent; practically, consistency and adherence matter more.

Galpin calls this chaos management: running out of time, getting cut off, not feeling it, being in a hotel, or any other life interruption. He says this will be 10–50% of workouts, so you need a decision rule.

If a 60-minute hypertrophy workout becomes 35 minutes, lower the load, lower the rest intervals, and get to the burn as quickly as possible to hit total volume. If it is a strength workout, he would rather you cut your volume in half, get a few high-load repetitions done, and not do very many sets that day. The choice depends on whether you are training for hypertrophy or strength.

Galpin argues that resistance exercise and strength training is the number one tool to combat neuromuscular aging, and you cannot get that effect from any other form of exercise. Loss of muscle power is what undermines the ability to stand up, catch yourself from a fall, and feel confident doing physical movements as you age. That is why strength training is not just for athletes or bodybuilders — it is for anyone who wants to live independently.

He also pushes back on the idea that it is too late to start. He says he was reading a paper that morning about adults over age 90 who saw improvements of 30–170% in muscle size and hypertrophy over roughly 12 weeks. He used this to reassure people in their 50s who have not been strength training that they are not toast and can still get to a fantastic spot quickly.

Galpin says hypertrophy training is essentially idiot proof in terms of programming: the work is hard and difficult, but the precision needed is far less than for power and strength. The classic requirement is to challenge the muscle so it needs to come back bigger, with the nutrients available to support growth. If you do that, it works.

The only wrong combination, he says, is infrequent, low intensity, and low volume. As long as one of those three variables is high, you will get there. This explains why countless styles of training all work, and it makes crafting a hypertrophy program fairly simple: you just have to make sure you do the work.

Galpin says strength is an actual function: can you create more force across a muscle, muscle group, or total movement. Hypertrophy is specifically an increase in size, with no actual mention of function. A muscle can grow larger without technically being stronger.

For new trainees and even intermediate trainees, there is a huge overlap between strength and hypertrophy, so training one often produces the other. Once people get past that point, the two become disentangled. It is quite easy to get stronger without adding much muscle mass, so the two goals can be programmed differently based on personal preference and purpose.

Galpin says strength/power exercise choice should be based on movements: explosive hip extension, pushing, pulling, and rotation. He recommends a reasonable balance of these movement patterns and says he does not care about the exact ratio, but you should not go six months without doing rotation or eight to ten weeks without a lower-body hinge.

If using the 3-to-5 method and picking as few as three exercises, pick one from each of those broad groups. This puts you in a good spot and keeps the program balanced across functional movement patterns rather than isolated muscle groups.

Galpin says if you are a consistent lifting junkie with a stable schedule, body-part splits are okay. But for most people with kids and a job, he prefers three days a week of total body, because if something happens you have only missed that body part for 48–72 hours.

He also suggests a hybrid option: two days a week of whole-body training plus two days a week of a body-part split to hedge against all risks. The research shows frequency per se doesn't matter much as long as total load and proximity to failure are equivalent; the practical challenge is that life gets in the way.