Description
People often believe that functional training is great for building a healthier body, to fix aches/pains, to learn to move better, and even to perform HIIT type of workouts. However, when it comes to building muscle (hypertrophy), most people default back to isolated training and bodybuilding style of workouts to achieve such goals. The belief is if you really want to add muscle, then you have to target certain muscles, hit different angles, and give special attention to each individual muscle.
Is that based on any real science though?
In fact, in a review of 23 studies on the topic of muscle isolation versus training muscles at once (multi-joint movements) it was found that the amount of muscle was the same and even MORE surprising that there was no added muscle or strength by adding single-joint exercises to a multi-joint workout routine. So, we actually there isn’t really a need to train muscle isolation and in fact, it could make your training far less efficient. Is that it though?
Why use DVRT functional training though? Should you just keep doing squats, deadlifts, bench press, and pull-ups over and over and over? Well, the truth is that functional training actually causes us to use MORE muscles during our training and not just of the smaller stabilizing muscles (that are pretty important in making us real world strong and resilient), but also the one’s we are targeting. In a fascinating study comparing dumbbells and barbells in pressing overhead in both seated and standing, researchers found the following…
The above study showed that the exercise with the most stability demands and the least amount of load actually stimulated the muscles of the shoulders the MOST! That is probably VERY shocking, possibly even upsetting, to many people. We have to be careful though, more instability does have a point of diminishing returns. However, this is EXACTLY what we cover in our DVRT Hypertrophy webinars and help you really become empowered to have the information and the know how to turn science into real life effective workouts.
Not only do we give you the knowledge, but 36 total body workouts featuring functional training tools that help you maximize your efforts of having muscle that helps you look your best, but also be your best. This is enough programming for a year and you can reuse the workouts over time to see how you have improved and never get bored. It isn’t just random variation though, we have carefully followed the principles of good hypertrophy programming to give you everything you need to be strong, healthy, athletic, and yes, build some great muscle!
We hope you enjoy this program as much as we did putting it all together for you!
Joe M. (verified owner) –
This is an incredible program and one that I believe will show the skeptics you can do two things at once, become more fit and improve your health through functional movements while also building strength that is useful in areas of life outside the gym.
Margaret Quinn (verified owner) –
Randy Ives (verified owner) –
Very helpful and timely answering my questions concerning the program.
Joel Feldman (verified owner) –
Previously I had purchased both the DVRT and LIFT programs. I’ve been working with them for a couple of years. They have been excellent but I feel my gains are leveling out. So I was intrigued when I saw the hypertrophy program. I went through the included webinars and are now 5 weeks into using the Hypertrophy workout programs. Bottom line, I am seeing really nice muscle and strength growth. I give credit to the included 36 workouts. In particular I have gained from these aspects of the workouts:1. four phase exercise tempos – I really hadn’t used tempo before / 2. structuring of supersets (heavier lifting up front) – I had been using circuits but I hadn’t been using supersets to accomplish this / 3. longer rest intervals (for instance 60 seconds) than I was using which has encouraged higher intensity during the work intervals. The suggestion from Ultimate Sandbag Training is to start with the first 3 workouts and repeat them each week for 4-6 weeks. So far this cadence has been good. I am progressing through the first four weeks and enjoying the change of pace by moving to the next 3 programs after that. As they say this gives a built in “deloading” every 4 weeks when you are getting used to the new set of weekly programs. Having the background of DVRT and LIFT has also been very synergistic in giving me the background to regress or progress exercise as needed. This course is turning out to be a tremendous value for me. For what it is worth, I am 65 years old.