Why the conventional wisdom on how to grow muscles is wrong

This article is focused on growth in muscle _size_ over growth in muscle _strength_. The two are related, but it's pretty well-established that you can bias your training towards one or the other. You can see the difference between experienced powerlifters and bodybuilders. PLs move heavier weights than BBs, but the latter generally have more muscle mass. I think training for strength has more everyday health benefits than bodybuilding and its training methodology (train large muscle groups with high weight and lower reps ~2x/week) at the novice and intermediate level is much less time-consuming.

I have been building large upper-body muscles with resistance body weight training on the pool. That means pushups essentially, but the steps-area of the pool let me do them with full hanging body weight and with many wide arm spreads.

It's important to have variations in how to position the pushups. I do 30-70 reps depending on difficulty of arm position, usually two or three sets a day max, each set can be a different position. When I feel strong I do reps slowly both on ascent and descent. Due to my flexibiility (a very important factor in having elongated shape big muscles in pecs etc), I also do triceps also in many widths by putting my hands behind me at the pool border and lifting my weight; it is very demanding exercise, also works back and shoulders.

However the most important tip no one realizes for growing muscle, for having resistance, for having tonus and for a real fast recovery comes from India. Apply oil to body (preferrably all of body, leave for 40+ minutes as you sit or meditate, listen to music; use old clothing and wash it separately, oil trashes and stains all, and it quickly ruins any stretch fiber and elastics bands on shorts etc). Coconut oil gives the most mass, good for hot season. Ginger oil good for winter, get south american Buriti oil if you can (mix some drops to coconut, use with utmost caution, observe the effects, how it makes you agitated etc, never use it in summer), brazilian indians used it for going to war, it makes muscles really bulge, The greek used oil for wrestling matches too, and for looking strong. Oil is not all about the shiny effect, it improves muscles tremendously.

I would compare the effect of not applying oil to the muscle parts after a workout to not eating any protein after a workout. It's such a dramatic effect.

There are a couple different definitions of failures

Mechanical failure - your form is being compromised, usually induced by muscular load

Throughput failure - you could maintain form but your cardiovascular capacity is the limiting factor and you are starting to decrease in tempo (either in the eccentric or concentric)

Partial Failure - you use assistance on the concentric or eccentric to continue to do the one that’s still has workload capacity

Each type of failure induces a different level of lactic acid build up, or muscle tearing, and can be increased in different ways. Usually one of them is a limiting factor and is why progressive overload is proven to improve strength and size.

Most of the people I’ve worked with don’t know true failure (within 1-2 RIR [reps in reserve] left) because they’re limited in cardiovascular capacity to even reach failure or they aren’t pushing themselves due to fear of form breakage/injury.

The reality is you shouldn’t be doing 1 rep maxes often, but you should be lowering the weight and experiencing true failure in order to progressive overload properly.

I believe the thinking is more that you're taking an injury risk that gain you nothing compared to stopping and resting, and doing another set once recovered if you want more volume.

Because injury will set you back far more than missing out on a few reps.

TLDR; More volume per session/week = more growth?

So really it becomes a balance of maximising volume against sustainable recovery.