Strength and Hypertrophy
Strength & Muscle 101: Start with Clear Training Objectives
Strength & Muscle Course: Tweet 1
Start with Clear Objectives
I'll keep everything simple so that everyone can understand it. I won't go into lab reports, injury history, or available equipment, though we can discuss those in the comments. I'll focus on generalizable, 'vanilla' programming that can work for most people with slight tweaks.
For anything not covered, there's always the comments section, right? Feel free to ask!
The first thing you should consider is your training objective. If I were an absolute beginner, I would aim to gain muscle and strength. Honestly, that's a great place to start. So, what are the possible weight training objectives?
The first term I want to introduce to you is hypertrophy. This means increasing muscle size, and it's the opposite of atrophy. Atrophy in this context means the wasting away of muscles due to disuse, nutritional deficiencies, or aging. One of the reasons we lift weights is for hypertrophy - but that's not the only reason.
Another objective is building strength. Strength can be classified into three main types (though there may be more, depending on how you classify them).
Let's focus on the big three: maximum strength, power, and strength endurance.
Maximum Strength is the greatest amount of force you can exert in a single effort. It's your one-rep max - the most weight you can lift for just one repetition, usually in exercises like the squat, deadlift, or bench press.
Power is the ability to exert force quickly. Power = force x velocity. It's often confused with strength, but power is more about speed and explosiveness. Think of movements like Olympic lifts or jumping, where you need to move weight quickly.
Strength Endurance is your ability to sustain repeated muscle contractions over a longer period. It's about maintaining force production across many reps or a longer time, like in a high-rep workout.
For most of you who are just starting out, a combination of strength and hypertrophy training is ideal. These days, people call it powerbuilding. It's a hybrid of powerlifting and bodybuilding.
Personally, I don't like the term powerbuilding for the same reason I don't like the term powerlifting - they're both misnomers. Powerlifting doesn't have much to do with power; it's all about strength, which makes the name misleading.
Similarly, powerbuilding is about building muscle along with strength. Weight training is always great for improving your body composition. If you're just starting out, you can expect to gain muscle and lose fat simultaneously.
However, for intermediate and advanced lifters, the process becomes a bit more complex. This post focused on training objectives. In the next post, I'll cover periodization strategies. What are your training objectives? Drop them in the comments!