The Bodybuilding Professor

Do you still believe HST is the fastest way to grow? Has anything changed since you first introduced it?

Actually, I’m more convinced than ever that HST is the fastest and easiest way for natural guys to grow. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the method, HST is an acronym for hypertrophy-specific training. It’s a method by which training - the kind that everybody is familiar with - can be “purposefully” manipulated to elicit the greatest amount of growth in the least amount of time. The research behind HST helps to fill in the gaps of our understanding of how lifting builds muscle, and thereby allows us to take out a lot of the guesswork when it comes to “load”, “volume”, and “frequency” when sheer size is the goal. And it does this by adding new techniques such as strategic deconditioning as well as repurposing well-known principles such as progressive load, volume, and frequency.

I’m not sure that anything has changed except for trying to get people to understand that HST isn't really a specific “routine,” per se. Instead, HST is a big conversation about muscle growth and how to manipulate the variables of training to maximize the anabolic effect. In reality, anybody who’s lifting for the sole purpose of getting big is using HST. Now, the specific routine he’s using might not be optimal for growth, but it’s still HST in the same sense that when a person trains for strength, we call it strength training. I think this broader understanding of HST opens the conversation to people who might otherwise think HST is a specific routine that they have to either love or leave. Happy lifting!

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