eli5: What is a hypertrophy workout different from a normal workout?
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“Normal” workout seems quite vague, but as others have said, if you are relatively untrained basically any workout will make your muscles bigger. However as you start to hit the gym more, it helps to start thinking about what you’re trying to accomplish.
As a generalization, improvement derived from physical activity happens because your body is trying to adapt to become more efficient at the activity you are doing. If you run long distances, your body wants to be more efficient at that. If you lift heavy weights, your body wants to be more efficient at that.
What we’ve found through lots of experimentation is that there is a certain type of stimulus where the a significant part of the body’s adaptation is to make the muscle bigger. This tends to be lifting weights to the point that you can only do 1-2 more repetitions, after doing 5-30 repetitions. You *can* get bigger muscles doing 3 reps of a huge weight or 50 reps of a very light weight, but it is a lot less effective. So the above is what is generally called a hypertrophy workout.
If you want bigger muscles but workout outside of this range a lot, then your body is incentivized to make adaptations more suited for that rather than put on muscle. For example if you only run marathons, having big muscles isn’t just not helpful, it’s a detriment, because you just have more weight to carry around, so you will tend to lose muscle over time.
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