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The question is can you build muscle while increasing strength… Kinda.
In theory, you can build a program that’s got a nice little mix of training to induce hypertrophy and strength training BUT if you want to maximize your results you have to pick a team because they live on the opposite end of the spectrum.
It all comes back to that age-old question that every crazy person that sits outside of circle K asks you… How much do you bench.. More specifically your 1RM.
When you think 1RM I don’t want you to daydream about being in high school trying to smash your marshmallow prick into anything that moves and max out your squat, deadlift, and… bench. I want you to extend it to everything you do… Side lateral, rope extensions, or even hip thrusts. Because we don’t actually how much weight you can dry hump into the air, we are using it as a way to optimize your training to either favor muscle growth or increase strength…
If your purpose in life is to pick up progressively heavier sh*t then you’re going to want to spend the most time possible in this 80-100% of your 1rm or even beyond with things like negatives to promote those strength adaptations.
And if your goal is to get so overly muscular just in case you’re able to bounce your tits then the science says that training anywhere from 30-80% is optimal for hypertrophy but I’d actually argue that it’s better to stay towards the lower end because then you run the risk losing the ability to connect with the muscle you’re intending to and instead just move the weight.
Keep in mind even when I say 30% of your 1rm that’s to complete failure so in the real world what that might look like is a leg extension you do for 50 disgusting reps.
Which brings us to another difference and that’s how you actually complete a rep. When you’re trying to increase strength you’re not only attempting to move heavier loads but your goal should be to move them as fast as possible (in a controlled manner), now the weight is going to be heavy and keep you from actually moving fast but you sure are trying to.
when it comes to growth it could be either fast or slow, it doesn’t matter, speed is merely a tool you use to increase the intensity of the set… sometimes you’ll slow it down actually count down the seconds between each rep and other times you’ll speed it up so you’re able push those reps to a ridiculously high number.
When you’re training for strength then your goal is to distribute the work of the nerve to muscle connections with hypertrophy you’re trying to isolate it.
For example To do a deadlift a lot of muscles need to work in unison to make it happen ….and to improve at it.. to lift more weight you don’t need a bigger muscle… you obviously need a stronger one. And you get that by applying stress.
The reason staying in the higher percentages of your 1RM max is more conducive to increasing strength is because not all stress is equal. The stress caused by mechanical tension or lifting heavy weight causes your body to recruit more motor neurons, larger motor neurons, increases the rate at which they fire as well as changes in the connective tissue and the muscle itself.
The stress caused by taking sets to failure in that 30-70ish percentage of your one rep max induce more metabolic stress. Now they both can induce hypertrophy but it’s easy to see why training with the goal to increase the load that’s burdened by several muscles is going to be less effective for building muscle compared to doing everything you can to keep those supporting muscles from getting involved and isolating the stress down to just that target muscles until your induce so much metabolic stress you spit up your protein shake on your shirt like a big fat infant.
#buildmuscle #buildstrength #growth