JT
Feb. 19, 2026
The Biggest Study on Muscle Growth Just Came Out. Here's What Actually Matters.
By Jerry Teixeira | Nearly 30 Years of Strength Experience
Gymnasts have been building elite strength and jaw dropping physiques for decades with gymnastics rings.
A landmark paper just dropped—authored by some of the most respected researchers in exercise science, including Stu Phillips—and it's the most comprehensive breakdown of muscle hypertrophy ever published.
I've read through it. And here's my honest take: it validates everything we've been saying at BWS. And it quietly buries a lot of what the fitness industry has been selling you.
I've been saying this for years. I've built real muscle with push-ups, rings, and bodyweight for over a decade. So have elite gymnasts. This paper just gave us the peer-reviewed receipts.
Let me break it down in plain English.
What Actually Causes Muscle Growth?
The paper is unambiguous: mechanical tension is the primary driver of hypertrophy.
Not the pump. Not the hormonal spike after your workout. Not muscle soreness.
Mechanical tension—the force placed on muscle fibers when they contract against resistance—is what triggers the cascade that leads to muscle protein synthesis and new muscle tissue.
That's it. That's the mechanism.
Everything else is either a side effect, a downstream signal, or just noise.
The Three Things That Don't Drive Muscle Growth
1. Post-Exercise Hormones
This one surprises people. Your testosterone, growth hormone, and IGF-1 spike after a hard workout—and the fitness industry has built an entire mythology around this. Heavy compound lifts, "anabolic windows," protocols designed to maximize this spike.
According to this paper, those acute hormonal increases play little to no role in muscle growth—in men or women.
The signal that matters happens at the muscle tissue level, not systemically through your bloodstream.
2. Metabolic Stress and 'The Pump'
The pump feels productive. Your muscles swell, veins pop, you feel massive for about 45 minutes post-workout.
The paper finds that metabolic stress and cell swelling have little causal evidence for driving hypertrophy. If they contribute at all, it's indirectly and minimally.
This means high-rep, low-load burnout sets done purely for the pump aren't doing what most people think they're doing. This is the science behind what we call "junk volume."
3. Muscle Damage (Soreness)
The idea that soreness = growth has been persistent for decades. If you're not sore, you didn't work hard enough.
Not supported by the evidence. Soreness is a byproduct of unaccustomed stress—often from eccentric loading. It tells you the muscle was stressed in an unfamiliar way. It does not correlate reliably with hypertrophy.
You can grow muscle without being sore. You can be destroyed after a workout and grow very little.
What This Means for How You Train
The mechanism for muscle growth is straightforward:
Apply mechanical tension → stimulate muscle protein synthesis → ensure muscle protein synthesis exceeds muscle protein breakdown → repeat over time.
That's the whole equation. Progressive overload over time, applied consistently, with adequate recovery and protein intake.
Notice what's not in that equation: the specific tool you're using.
A push-up done with the right load, range of motion, and progression applies mechanical tension just like a bench press. Research—including studies comparing these two exercises directly—shows similar hypertrophy and strength outcomes when programming is matched.
The tool doesn't change the mechanism. The mechanism is what it is.
Realistic Expectations (And Why They're Good News)
One of the most useful things in this paper is what it says about realistic hypertrophy rates.
With consistent, well-programmed training, expect roughly 1-2 kg (about 2-4lbs) of fat-free mass per 8-12 weeks. Progress is fastest in the first 3-4 years and slows from there. The 5-year average is about 8 kg of lean mass for men and 5.5 kg for women.
Most people see those numbers and feel disappointed. I see the opposite.
That's over 17 lbs of lean muscle added to your frame for men, and over 12 lbs for women, by training at home, in your garage, back yard or living room, with nothing but bodyweight and gravity. That's a completely different body. A different metabolism. A different level of capability.
And it happens through boring, consistent, progressive tension. No gym membership required.
The person who trains consistently for 5 years, even at home, even with just bodyweight and a pair of dumbbells, ends up with a fundamentally different body composition. Different strength, different metabolism, different capacity for life.
The Bottom Line
The fitness industry has an incentive to make this complicated. Complex programs, specialized equipment, hormonal optimization protocols—these all have something to sell.
The science says: load the muscle progressively, recover, repeat. The muscle doesn't know or care whether the load comes from a barbell, a kettlebell, or your own bodyweight being moved through a difficult range of motion.
This is the whole foundation of Bodyweight Strength. Not "bodyweight is good enough"—that's lazy. The real message is: if you apply progressive mechanical tension through harder variations, with real effort and intelligent volume, your body will grow.
No barbell required. Not because barbells are bad, but because they're not the mechanism. Tension is.
Train hard. Train consistently. Give your body what it needs to recover.
That's the whole system.
If you want to train this way—with the science behind you and without needing a gym—grab the free Foundational 8 guide. It lays out the framework, the progressions, and how to apply this in 30 minutes or less at home.
Train smart. Stay capable.
JT
About Jerry Teixeira
Jerry Teixeira is the founder of Bodyweight Strength and has been physically training for nearly 30 years. Since 2019, Jerry has coached thousands of clients using the Minimum Effective Dose (MED) philosophy—maximizing results through surgical precision and leverage manipulation rather than high-volume "junk" training.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Does this mean I should stop chasing the pump entirely?
No. The pump isn't bad—it just isn't the driver of growth. If you enjoy high-rep work and it keeps you consistent, keep doing it. Just understand that the pump itself isn't what's building muscle. The mechanical tension you applied to get there is.
If hormones don't matter, why do steroids work?
The paper is talking about acute post-workout hormone spikes—the temporary increase in testosterone or growth hormone right after training. Those don't drive growth. Chronically elevated hormone levels from exogenous steroids are a different story entirely. That's a sustained supraphysiological environment, not a 30-minute spike.
If the movement is challenging and you're taking sets close to failure—where rep speed slows and effort increases—you're applying tension. That's what we call "Money Reps." If you can do 30 reps without slowing down, the movement is too easy. Progress to a harder variation.
Yes. The research supports that frequency matters less than total weekly volume and effort. Two to three days of hard, focused training—hitting each muscle group with adequate tension—is enough for most people to make consistent progress.
No. Soreness is a sign of unfamiliar stress, not ineffective training. You can have a productive workout and not be sore. You can be destroyed and grow very little. Stop using soreness as your metric. Use progression instead—are you doing more reps, harder variations, or more load over time?
Time under tension is a component of mechanical tension, but it's not a magic variable. Doing super slow reps for the sake of "more TUT" isn't better than normal controlled reps taken close to failure. What matters is that you're generating force through a full range of motion with real effort. Don't overcomplicate it.
Because barbells are excellent tools. They're easy to load progressively, stable, and allow for heavy compounds. But "excellent tool" doesn't mean "only tool." The mechanism is mechanical tension. Barbells deliver it. So do dumbbells, kettlebells, rings, and your own bodyweight—if programmed correctly.
With consistent training and adequate protein, expect 1-2 kg (about 2-4 lbs) of lean mass every 8-12 weeks in your first few years. You'll notice strength gains faster—usually within a few weeks. Visible body composition changes typically take 8-12 weeks of consistency.
Research suggests even a single hard set per muscle group per week produces measurable hypertrophy—about 55% of the gains you'd get from higher volumes. For most people, 2-4 hard sets per muscle group per week is enough to make meaningful progress, especially in year one. More helps, but with diminishing returns.