Three mechanisms of hypertrophy

Mechanical tension, metabolic stress and muscle damage.

1️⃣Mechanical tension - You want to generate the largest muscle force possible through a full range of motion.

2️⃣Metabolic stress ("the pump") - To optimise metabolic stress you need to maintain constant tension on the muscles. Focus on the pain building up in that muscle, stay with it and embrace it. This way, as blood gets pumped into the muscles by the arteries, the steady muscular contractions will prevent the veins from letting blood escape, resulting in high levels of metabolic stress and cell swelling.

3️⃣Muscle damage - This is focusing on the negatives. It happens with slow negatives, extended range of motion and high tension in the stretched position of the muscle. Doing a random exercise that you haven't done in a while also does the job.

The best lifts are those that can be manipulated to target each of the three mechanisms. The basic big lifts do the trick - squat, deadlift, hip thrust, bench press, military press, pull-up/pull-down and row. These exercises should feature highly in anyone's programming and tweaked accordingly to hit the three mechanisms.

In summary, you can use these three mechanisms in a single disgusting workout, or cycle through them over the course of a week