All right, so you want to get jacked for rugby, let's talk about it. In this video we're gonna talk about everything hypertrophy in as condensed but comprehensive manner as possible. What's going on everyone, it's TJ here from Rugby Muscle and so today we are talking about getting jacked. We're talking about getting big. We're talking about hypertrophy and without further ado, let's just get straight into it. So, what this video is going to be is a discussion on everything that you need to consider and not necessarily the secrets because the secrets don't exist. There's no secrets, okay? It's just what you need to consider when getting big and jacked as a rugby player. This is not going to be a video where I say, you must do these 10 movements, it's bollocks. It's not a video where I'm going to say, oh, you have to do this specific rep scheme for this movement because it makes all the difference, bollocks. It's not even going to be a scientific analysis of the volume that you need, again, because it's just not necessary, it's missing the forest through the trees. It's gonna be a little bit of a deeper discussion. We're not gonna go too in depth. We're not going to give a lecture I've already done a whole playlist on what you should be doing. So I'll link that in the the somewhere in the in the show notes or in the I card thing above or below and in description below For you to check out where I've made a playlist of four specific videos really getting into the nitty gritty details This is just something that I think a lot of you need to hear So a deeper discussion on what it takes to get big and strong and a framework for your approach. Okay. And if you, if you like that, you like the sound of that, hit that thumbs up button right now, because that really helps out. And if I forget later, then I've already told you to do it. Please do. It really helps out the channel grow. If you're new here, also hit subscribe and of course, comment your thoughts or any questions on this below. I'll always respond to them because I enjoy doing so. Now, what we have to understand, right, is. It's a bit of a chicken and egg argument when we're talking about Hyper Trophy, particularly when we're talking about Hyper Trophy in Frogberry, right? Because the best players are Jacked, but does that mean that you have to be jacked to be the best players? Not to be the best player. Sorry. There's just one of you or all of you I guess do you have to be jacked to be the best players? No, right? like that's just not how it works the best players end up being jacked because they're already like genetically perfectly built for to be a really good, powerful, strong athlete. And therefore, they get to train rugby from an early age. They get to you know, or sorry, training like an academy from an early age at a high level. They get to play at a high level and then utilize that power. You know it could also be the fact that they're already really talented at rugby. And they get in that environment for a long time, like Johnny Sexton here is, is in this picture because he's mid to late thirties now, and he is looking jacked, but he wasn't jacked, like, for the first five or so years of his career, he's tiny, but he was really good, so then he got in that, you know, specific professional rugby athlete environment whereby he was training like this. And yeah, he's, he's not huge, but he's, you know, he's pretty jacked in this picture for sure. Like, you know, and this is the result of a lot of people where they spend enough time being a professional athlete, being a professional rugby player, they're going to put on muscle. And particularly if we're looking at the level of athlete that it takes to be a professional rugby player, then you're already going to be on the genetic side of, of fortune. When it comes to getting jacked, it's also something where another chicken and egg argument is like, we keep giving this argument air because that's what people are searching for. They look searching for like, how do I get big and strong? Like, cause that's what people like to look at. I like to watch is, you know, big men smashing into each other, big, strong people smashing into each other. And they like to admire the athletes. And then they like to think, Okay, how do I do that? And, and you're not looking at all the other, you know, boring stuff about being the rugby athlete. They're looking at, you're looking at, you've got eyes on how big they are. Look at, have an extra breath here. Okay, how do I get jacked like him? You're not thinking, how do I play rugby like him? You think, how can I get jacked like him? Then how can I play rugby like him? So, yeah, it's a chicken and egg argument. What comes first? And with this search for content, that's why it ends up. Like, particularly when we're looking at rugby strength and conditioning stuff, like that's why it ends up, particularly with gym stuff as well, right, any sort of, in the general fitness realm, this comes in because people search for it, so then people make more content for it, which means that content does well, which means people make more content for it, it doesn't mean it's that important, it doesn't mean it's that detailed, it doesn't mean it's that specific, particularly like there's so many ridiculous hypertrophy channels on YouTube now, and so many ridiculous claims, But that's because that's what people are searching for, you know, so they're just feeding them what they want to hear. It's not necessarily what they need to hear, right? It's just, particularly when it comes to like bodybuilding stuff, you know, like there's so many different, like there's thousands and thousands of hours from like one or two channels on like bodybuilding and building bigger muscles. When really, like, like that's just because that's what people want to hear. These people don't need to hear any more information. There's no more information that they need. To get as big literally as big as possible. There's no secret tip that they're missing out on they know enough they're doing it It's just you know, it's just not that like not that fun, you know, not that like flashy so What really builds muscle is, you know, yeah, genetics, focus and consistency. And that's, that's kind of it, right? We could end this video here. We won't, we'll keep going. But that's, that's it, right? So focus, when I'm talking about in the moment, day by day. So not skipping sessions all the time because you can't be bothered. Not skipping a body part because you can't be bothered. Not skipping, not going lazy on a set like that. But focus in the short term really does make a difference. And then the consistency in the long term makes a difference. So, you know, not giving up, not, you know, spending four months in the gym and then spending five months out of the gym. Like, you know, you're allowed to have deloads. You're allowed to have backoffs. You know, that's times where you're not training hypertrophy, but overall in the long term, you are staying consistent. Same with, you know, you could look at this in a, in a week's situation where you can have one session where you skip it for a week and that's okay, but you know, long term, you're not making a habit out of that. So it's consistency that really makes a big difference when it comes to hypertrophy. Now. I put this here because, like, this is really, like, he says it in a funny way, and maybe you aren't familiar with Ronnie Coleman. Maybe you are. Let me know in the comments below, because I, like, Ronnie Coleman was already past the time. I don't think he won Olympia whilst I was still lifting or whatever. He might have done, but he was already a legend, and that was all the videos that were on YouTube was him screaming, yeah, buddy, nobody, everybody wants to be a bodybuilder. But nobody want to lift no heavy ass weight and that's that's kind of the truth. Everyone wants to find a different trick that's gonna help them get bigger and get stronger and really like being a bodybuilder is Like the extreme of it, but as i've said in other videos Just looking better is building muscle and losing fat and that is the same thing You know, it's just bodybuilders taking it to this ridiculous extreme And so you don't need to take it to this ridiculous extreme and you're not capable of taking it to this ridiculous extreme and these are just the freaks of the freaks and As a rugby player, you don't need to get anywhere near that. So When it comes to hypertrophy, we can't just look at one or two things. Rather, it's like lots of different dials. Some turn up, the others turn down. They're all interlinked. So, you can't isolate one of these things and say, this is the most important. What's more important, volume or effort? Or, you know, do you need to go to failure or do you need to do this exercise or do you need to train this time many times a week? It's all just noise. Okay. And hopefully by the end of this video, you understand that completely and you have a bit of a plan going forward, but like just like rugby, right? There's so many different things that contribute to how you're going to build how, how a muscle just builds, right? So in rugby, you've got, you know, lots of different elements that you want to work on your speed, your conditioning, your power, your strength, your, your movement control, your agility, your aerobic and a lactic anaerobic conditioning, like all of this stuff and your skills, your teammates, your teamwork, your overall team fitness, your game plans, all this builds into, you know, produce what your rugby performance you're going to put in. All of this stuff here, your exercises, rep range, volume, effort, frequency, other stresses and calories. They all interlink and they all combine to build what your muscle gaining progress is going to look like. And these will all depend on your age or how you respond to these are all going to depend on your age, your fitness, your genetics. You can't just isolate one. Not one is more important than the other. Like they're all interrelated. It's not a case of importance. It's not a case of what should I focus on? It's not a case of you know, what's, what's going to be better for me or better for growing muscle or better for a certain body part. It's a case of how, like, how do, how these all interplay and whichever approach you go with, like, you're still going to end up building muscle. So let's look at all of these factors and how they interlink and, and give you an idea of what you need to consider when it comes to hypertrophy. First and foremost, let's look at exercises. So you see this a lot now. You need to do these five exercises, or you need to do this exercise, or these are the 10 best exercises. And I've seen it now to the point where there's some channels that will ask specifically someone, if you only could do 10 exercises, what would you do? And then the video gets posted. So and so says these are the only 10 exercises you need. Yeah, but you can do more. This is just an unnecessary, pointless, waste of time limitation. Like, it's just, like you can do loads of different things. Why, why, why are we limiting ourselves? It doesn't, it doesn't make sense. You know, unless you really can't stick with a program and then you just have to focus on, like, even then it doesn't make sense because they're all interrelated. fits the scenario that you're in and the outcomes that you want. Now, of course, to build strength compounds are going to be ideal. And if you're getting stronger that's going to help you get bigger. Likewise. If you're, if you're working you know, more than one muscle at a time, you know, you're just getting through that much work. You get more bang for your buck. You're more likely to build more muscle. But with that being said, these compound movements are going to build more fatigue. Sometimes they're going to take longer to do as well, right? So you can take a lot longer to bust out. You know, four sets of deadlifts or Romanian deadlifts or squats than it would do just to do four sets on the hamstring curl or some other isolation leg movement. So just something to bear in mind you can do like, and again, it's also dependent on the rep ranges as to what exercise you do. You're not going to do isolation like leg curls. For a set of five it just doesn't like it's just not a good use of your time Whereas if you're doing sets of 10 to 15 to 20 reps Doing that on squats is going to be brutal and it's not going to like Yeah, you'll probably end up growing from it, but it's going to fatigue you so much that you're going to be knackered for all of your other work and as a rugby player you can't afford to do that. And you're probably not going to have your limiting factor be your legs, your limiting factor is going to be your, you're just going to be gassed out and your lower back is probably going to give out before that. So when we're looking at like higher rep movements, maybe we're looking at doing the leg press or we're looking at doing split squats. And when it comes to exercises, more often than not, you're not like, It's not one exercise doesn't work for you and doesn't make you grow. It's probably that you find it difficult to hit the form. And that could be your body. It could just be that you don't do that form very well. It could be that you're progressing too fast. These all interrelate with each other. So it's not about necessarily choosing different exercises. It's about working on the exercise that you're doing a little bit better. Maybe not focus on adding weight, but maybe focus on your movement quality. A lot of people say that squats hurt their knees. And then they show me their form and it's trash. And why is their form trash? Because they've put too much weight on the bar and they can't go low. So all of a sudden when you remove 50% of that weight their squat looks better but it still hurts because they're just not used to doing that deeper form or that good a form. So that would still benefit them massively. There's loads of different scenarios where this could be like this could apply to you. So it requires just a level of experimentation and you're going to need over the long haul variation. Yes, in theory, you could just do 10 exercises forever and, and probably continue to build muscle, but it just makes sense. Not just like physically as far as like hitting parts of the muscle at angles that they might not get hit, but mentally just do it. You know, once you've tapped out on one movement. You're going to put more effort into a different movement that feels new and feels more fun. Plus, you're going to learn the technical element, so you're going to be able to progress in that movement, which then keeps you in the gym. Whereas if you're getting bored, and then you sack it off, again, you're less likely to stick to that. But, it is important also to know that you can't just do exercises that you like. So, if you, you know, I program rear foot elevated or Bulgarian split squats for a lot of people, and they hate split squats. But they hate them because they're hard and they're hard because they're effective, you know, so It is like one of those again kind of chicken and eggy kind of thing where It's about you can't just do just what you like Because if you do then you only get good at that stuff and then you miss out on really effective movements that you don't like Next, we've got rep ranges and again, it's not as important as exercise selection as such and it's not really that important at all for hypertrophy. If you do enough reps, like as long as it's heavy enough, you're going to build muscle. Literature has shown it can be anywhere from 3 to 20 reps. So, if you do enough sets of 3, you're still probably going to grow. It's not always recommended if you're really strong because it needs a lot. It is recommended for strength and for effectiveness as a rugby player. And it's still enough to keep slowly gaining you muscle. Again, saying how many rep ranges, or how many reps you must do, and this is the met rep range, is bollocks. This is done to get you clicks. It's dictated more so, as we've already touched on, by the movement that you're doing and that relationship there. It's also dictated by other factors. So like, if you, if you're doing sets of four four reps, Like, and doing 8 sets of that is going to give you the equivalent volume of, of 4 sets of 8 reps. Like, which is going to be more time efficient. Obviously, 4 sets of 8 reps, and if you've got a limited time, and this is your accessory movement, or this is your other movement after your main lift, then maybe you don't have time to spend 8, to do 8 sets of 4. Likewise, it, again, it doesn't really matter. Just get it between 3 and 20. Do, get, make sure the weight is heavy enough. Get close enough to failure. Don't necessarily have to fail. I'd say you'd stay one rep shy of failure. How you know that is every now and again going to failure because that is what's going to teach you what failure really is. And then the more you do that, the more you're going to understand what being one or two reps away from failure is like. And that's where you'd stay for strength and for hypertrophy. You don't need to go to failure all the time. And in fact, that's going to cost you a lot of fatigue. So rep ranges 20 really simple. And again, that's interrelated to the other stuff, and it's also interrelated to here. So that your volume, your effort, your frequency will bundle all of these together because you can't really separate them. So the more effort you put in, the less volume you're going to be able to. Likewise, the less volume, if you, if you can't do that much volume, you're going to have to put in a lot of effort for your working sets. So if you're doing 10 sets in a workout, so I've done both of this. I've done German volume training where it's 10 sets of 10. I'm not maxing out on any of those sets. It ends up being a hard session because I'm getting through 10 sets of work. But. Yeah, and I feel pumped and, but I'm not really going that close to failure at all, but I'm getting through a lot of work and, and really I'm not, I'm working that hard macro wise, like overall, but in each set I'm not working that hard. Whereas right now I'm going and working to like one to two heavy top sets for my strength work and for my hypertrophy. So each set is just that much harder. Same thing for frequency. So because that kind of interlays with this stuff, right? So if you're putting in loads of effort and lots of volume, you're not going to be able to do that every day. Likewise, if you're putting in really low volume, but a decent effort, you could do that quite often. And in fact, if we're looking for some like really nailed down answers that like that's where we stick with, I'd say the frequency is like two to three times a week is best, mostly two a week. There's not many body parts where I'd recommend only once a week unless it's a time based constraint, which you know, it's still fine You're still gonna grow But for the most part if you really want to grow muscle, you should train it twice a week There is no best fucking workout split. This is just a con of a clickbaity YouTube Thumbnail don't buy into it. There is no optimal split There isn't you just have to get through enough work over the course of the week for the muscle to grow and it's really important to remember that when we're talking about your workout split and we're talking about your training. As a rugby player, you're not just a bodybuilder and just focus on hypertrophy. You've got lots of other stuff going on. So, your split has to be reactive to that as well. So you can't do you know, a body part split doesn't make sense anyway. An upper lower might not make sense depending on the run in it you might have as part of your training. So something that you have to remember here is that as a rugby player, you're not a bodybuilder. So you're, you're not only focused on hypertrophy. So that even like negates the idea of a split even more so because your split is going to be dictated by the amount of sessions that you can get in. As I've previously said, it's like two to three, maybe four sessions a week you need. And therefore just train the whole body and get in enough work over the course of the week and then it can be reactively Programmed in by what other ruppy sessions you've got maybe that sprint session maybe condition sessions, etc Okay, but for the most part two a week is best if you can do three a week, that's fine You can reduce the volume a little bit that works But what I like is the example here though where we've used the scenario from before where we said, oh we have to do Two sets of eight reps or sorry, four sets of eight reps. We can now do that twice a week. So we, instead of doing four sets, we split that over the week. And now we just do two sets of eight twice a week, or we do, instead of doing eight sets of four, we do four sets of four. That seems a lot more manageable, particularly if we're looking at strength work. Now we've got a lot more manageable, manageable volume for our effort. And again, you realize that if we spread our spread our training over like smartly over a week, then this stuff just doesn't really matter. It's just one of those things that it just takes time and doing more isn't going to be necessarily better, right? So people that are looking to grow muscle. Right. If you, if you really do everything, if you do everything 80% well, you're going to gain three to four kilos in a year, right? There's numbers I'm plucking out of my ass, but you get the point. Three to four kilos a year. If you do everything absolutely perfect, you're going to gain three and a half to four and a half kilos a year. Maybe like that, that's the difference that it makes. Like it's just, and what you've sacrificed for that entire year. Isn't worth it. All right, particularly as a replayer with all these other areas to concern. So you you're probably going to be doing enough Especially when we're looking at our other stresses, this is stuff that you do need to get a handle on and this is stuff that like if you get this right, everything else becomes easier and you will see yourself get bigger. So we're looking at, you know, your life, your rugby, like just, just not being as stressed in day to day, being on top of things, staying on top of your schedule having a good night's sleep consistently. Obviously get into the gym and and then food food is the huge one here. Food is really big In fact, let's let's just talk about food calories is like Outside of all this training as I said this training matters in the grand scheme of things The specifics don't matter as much as what you would think But what does matter is that you make sure that you're eating enough if you're not eating enough It doesn't matter if everything else is great. You're just making it that much harder for yourself to grow So you just got to eat enough to fuel hard training. I do have a macro calculator I'll i'll probably put it in the links below or in the cards above You'll see it there and you'll have an idea of how many calories you should be eating. It's just a guess. It's not precise. You just need to make sure that you're eating enough to fuel hard training and to recover from that hard training. But with that being said, you also want to make sure that you're not eating so much that you end up getting fat and so that you know, you gain weight and then you have to cut again and then you have to cut again and you're spending all this time in a calorie deficit where you're losing, you're trying to lose weight and therefore that's just inhibiting the ability to grow muscle. So I think it's just one of those things where you need to stay lean enough and then slowly but surely, yeah, you, you probably do want to gain weight. But you want to gain that weight really slowly. Like I say, like you think about how long it takes to grow muscle. Be patient with that. You want to slowly see that scale increase. And then once you've seen it increase to get to a number that you're quite uncomfortable with or your body fat gets to a level that you're uncomfortable with. Then spend a little bit of time cutting it and then go again and just repeat that but you always want to make sure that You're getting in enough calories Most people i've done a whole video on this, but most people will find themselves in one of two camps You've got your ovaries that naturally will end up being too big and then they don't let themselves Stay in a surplus for long enough because they gain all of their weight in two weeks or a month And then they're back to cutting again. They're just not going to be able to stay in a period of time or in a calorie surplus for long enough to really like target muscle growth. Yes, they can still grow muscle whilst they're losing because they've got excess fat to use as fuel, but it's not ideal. And then the people in the other camp are those people that just consistently under eat. If they get too stressed, they under eat and they don't, they forget to eat meals. And usually they're kind of naturally skinny, but that's from this. The naturally skinny part is that they're naturally not that hungry. They naturally don't eat that much. They don't actually don't eat enough to grow muscles. So making sure that you continually do eat enough to grow is going to be the golden ticket for you. As long as you're ticking those boxes that we've discussed before about your hypertrophy. So my best piece of advice for this right outside of the train the muscle twice a week is probably the biggest one there But other than that like it's a mindset thing. You've got to make sure that you prepare you've got to make sure that this is a a Specific goal for you. You want to get jacked you want to get big you're watching this video all the way to the end And you've given it a thumbs up And you've let me know in the comments that you've enjoyed it or you've said hi in the comments below to help the algorithm Because you want to get jacked so Don't you know it is your job to make sure that you're eating enough food It is your job to make sure that you're sleeping well So your job to make sure you stay consistent and you continually get that working i'm not talking about over a couple weeks because that's not how long it takes to build muscle It's over a longer period of time give yourself three months. That was what It's a James here in this picture My picture is like eight months, but you can really make big progress As long as you give yourself the time to do that and give yourself the runway to build. So don't go hard as you can week one or week two, right? Give yourself some room to build in that volume, to build in the, the, the consistency and get some quality work going and, and, and then keep at it. That's what's going to build muscle. And, and really the goal is you shouldn't be looking at measuring your muscle week on week on week. You should be measuring. Your progress with your training. If you're lifting heavier, week on week on week, and it comes to 2 to 3 months down the line, and you're lifting 10 to 20 kilos heavier, or 15 kilos heavier, or even 5 kilos heavier, there's a very good chance you've grown muscle to be able to lift that. That's, that's how the body works. But remember that also, This is not always they're going to be the focus. In fact, other focuses are going to be the key, like, because then you can just always operate again. This isn't that specific, right? You can train for strength and still grow. This stuff can just be in the background because you watching this Most likely you're not a bodybuilder. You want to be an athlete. So there's lots of other stuff going on. And yes, there can be times where you really target hypertrophy and like that is the main goal of your training, but it doesn't mean that you're going to have to eat loads and gain 10 pounds in a period of two months. Like that wouldn't work. So be patient with this stuff. You're not a bodybuilder. You've got other focuses. Let those other focuses come along. Let the results come along slowly as far as what you're seeing in the, in the training, in the gym, in your log book, as the weights come up, and then you will see your muscle grow. And for goodness sake, please make sure you eat. Final piece of advice is remove emotion. So this is something that, you know, people get attached to particularly when it comes to, you know, because you're, you're, you're physique is, you know, it's an emotional part of you, how you look like evoke strong emotions. And sometimes we get panicky and we say, Oh, I want to add this and I want to add this and I'll do more and more and more and more and more. But you know, so you get all excited that you're going to do a hypertrophy phase and you bump up your calories by 2000 extra calories. So now you're eating 4000 calories a day and you're saying that you're going to go to the gym for 52 hour sessions every day. That's emotionally driven stuff because that will always. Always for you guys watching this video that will always wear thin. Okay. And it's not going to make the big difference. The big difference is what you're doing for months. And as long as you're ticking these boxes, that is what's going to grow the muscle, not trying to outsmart your train, not trying to overthink it, not doing any special, like special specific movements where we're doing a triple drop set, or we're doing a specific stretch or we're doing anything like that, that like this stuff can be appealing again, because it's probably like an emotional reaction. It can get appealing. But at the end of the day, it's it's you just being emotionally excited because you think you're going to grow muscle and like it's going to be you're going to transform overnight. It's not how it works. Okay, removing emotion from your training. Think about it practically what you need to accomplish. Okay, and don't don't get carried away by emotion. Okay, good way to do that, of course, is to have someone else take care of your training. If you want that to be me, I'll put the links in the description below. If you want to work with me here at rugby muscle, be willing to take you on. It would be great to see some more people get jacked. Be better rugby players. With that all being said, if you enjoyed this video, give it a thumbs up. Let me know in the comments below any other questions that you have as it pertains to hypertrophy. If you're interested in the stuff that I've spoken about, put them in the links in the show below. Subscribe if you haven't done so already. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you in the next one.