No more excuses for crappy genetics! The brutal truth about why your partner is growing and you're not!

It's a situation that can get really frustrating in the gym: You and your training partner follow exactly the same training plan, have similar diets, but he can build twice as much muscle in half the time. While most of us would automatically point to unfair genetics at that point, modern science offers a much more accurate and surprising answer.

Forget testosterone

Research shows that how fast you build muscle isn't primarily dependent on your natural testosterone levels or your gender. According to the science, the absolute most important indicator of success is what's going on inside your muscle cells at the very beginning of your training efforts.

Ribosomes play a major role

Scientists who analyzed more than two decades of research on muscle hypertrophy found that people respond differently to the same strength training because of ribosomes - tiny cellular structures that act as factories for protein production.

The people who respond best to training and grow the fastest start making a lot more ribosomes right after their first workout. For those who gain muscle more slowly, this process is dampened at the beginning and gets off to a much more tepid start.

What's also fascinating is what the researchers didn't discover: neither the testosterone levels of the younger adults nor their usual diet had any significant association with which group (fast vs. slow recruiters) the individual fell into.

What to do if you are a "slow charger"?

If you feel like your muscles are growing painfully slow on you, science has some good news for you: Your cells aren't broken, they just need more work.

If your body isn't responding as quickly, it means only one thing - you need a bigger, more sustained training stimulus. The solution isn't to throw a monkey wrench in the works, thinking you've reached your limit, but instead to strategically increase your training volume and endure. It has been found that when you increase the volume of work done, the category of "non-responders" shrinks drastically. And this is true for both young and older exercisers.

Mechanical stress and training near failure

The main driver of muscle growth is mechanical tension (the force your muscle generates when working against a load). This is what gives the ribosomes the signal to wake up and start working.

But for this to work, you have to put the right effort into the exercise. If you end a set feeling like you could easily do another three or four reps, you're cheating yourself out of results. For maximum progress, it is recommended to follow these rules:

• Practice near failure: research clearly shows that for maximum growth (hypertrophy) you should end a work set about 1 to 2 reps before your actual physical limit.
• Don't go to complete failure every time: exercising to complete, absolute failure on every set does not provide any additional measurable benefits. On the contrary, it will extremely deplete your central nervous system and unnecessarily increase the time it takes to recover.

Summary: You've got it in your hands

The rate of muscle building may vary, but the conclusion is abundantly clear: You have much more control over your muscle-building potential than you think. Increase your training volume, keep your muscles under enough tension, pay attention to consistency, and don't be afraid to hit the bottom of your strength in sets (but always with a small, calculated margin). The results won't take long to come.