Strength vs. Hypertrophy (The 65% Threshold for Lifters Chasing PRs vs. Muscle Size) | Ep 297
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Why does always chasing maximum STRENGTH seem to limit muscle development, while always focusing on building MUSCLE doesn't deliver the strength gains you want?
This paradox frustrates countless lifters, but the answer lies in understanding the pathways and mechanisms behind strength and hypertrophy.
Learn the science-backed differences between training for maximal strength vs. optimal muscle growth, and how to program for both without compromising either goal.
Main Takeaways:
The 65% threshold reveals why strength and hypertrophy training require different approaches
For beginners, neural adaptations drive strength gains with minimal muscle growth
Advanced lifters need strategic programming to optimize both strength and size
Mechanical tension drives both adaptations but through different pathways
Timestamps:
0:01 - The strength-size paradox
3:04 - Strength vs. hypertrophy
9:12 - Why intensity differs between approaches
13:01 - Volume for muscle vs. strength
15:55 - Rest periods and exercise selection
17:48 - How to train for strength or hypertrophy
26:53 - Powerbuilding
31:39 - Common myths and misconceptions
37:29 - Training age and how it changes your approach
Strength vs. Hypertrophy and the 65% Rule for Lifters Who Want It All
If you've been lifting for a while, you've probably noticed a paradox. Training for maximum strength doesn’t always lead to the biggest muscles, while training for muscle growth doesn’t always maximize strength. Many lifters struggle with this balance, wondering if they should be lifting heavy to get stronger or using lighter weights with more reps to build muscle. The truth is, you don’t have to pick just one. Strength and size are connected, but they require different strategies to optimize. If you want to get stronger and look stronger, you need to understand how they work together and how to program both into your training.
Strength vs. Hypertrophy
Strength training is about increasing your ability to generate maximal force. Think powerlifters focusing on their one-rep max in the squat, bench, and deadlift. Hypertrophy training, on the other hand, is about increasing muscle size using mechanical tension, usually through moderate weights and rep ranges.
The key difference is in the way the body adapts. Early on, most strength gains come from neurological improvements, not muscle growth. Your nervous system gets better at recruiting muscle fibers and coordinating movement. This explains why beginners can gain strength quickly without seeing major changes in muscle size. As you get more advanced, though, further strength gains require more muscle mass. This is why elite powerlifters are often very muscular, even if their main goal isn’t aesthetics.
The 65% Rule
Research shows that to build strength, you need to train with at least 65% of your one-rep max. This is the intensity threshold needed to develop the nervous system adaptations necessary for strength. Hypertrophy, however, can occur with loads as low as 30% of your max, provided you train close to failure.
For strength, lifting heavy is essential. This means working in the 80 to 100% range of your max to maximize motor unit recruitment. If your focus is muscle growth, though, you have more flexibility. Hypertrophy can be achieved with lower loads as long as you push sets close to failure to ensure enough mechanical tension.
How Strength and Hypertrophy Training Differ
Strength training focuses on heavier loads, lower reps, and longer rest periods. The goal is to train the nervous system and develop efficient motor patterns. This means focusing on compound lifts like squats, deadlifts, presses, and rows with rep ranges in the one to six range, resting at least three to five minutes between heavy sets. Strength programs emphasize quality over quantity, meaning fewer total sets but a focus on executing each rep with maximum force.
Hypertrophy training emphasizes volume. The total amount of work done is a major driver of muscle growth, and this typically means more sets and a broader range of rep schemes, from six to 20 reps per set. Rest periods are often shorter, in the one to three-minute range, to maintain tension and metabolic stress. Exercises include a mix of compound and isolation movements, ensuring muscles are trained from multiple angles for balanced development.
How to Train for Both Strength and Size
Many lifters want to be both strong and muscular. The good news is that you can train for both, but it requires balancing intensity and volume. Powerbuilding is a popular approach that blends strength and hypertrophy. This method prioritizes heavy compound lifts at the beginning of a workout, followed by moderate to higher rep accessory work to build muscle.
A typical powerbuilding session might start with a heavy squat, bench, or deadlift in the three to five rep range. After that, additional compound movements and isolation exercises fill out the session with higher rep work. Over time, this allows you to get stronger while also building muscle.
The Biggest Myths About Strength and Hypertrophy
One common myth is that you need to lift extremely heavy weights to build muscle. In reality, research shows that moderate weights can be just as effective for muscle growth if taken close to failure. The key is mechanical tension, not just the weight on the bar.
Another misconception is that strength gains can happen indefinitely without muscle growth. While beginners can gain strength without significant increases in size, more advanced lifters must build more muscle to keep getting stronger.
The idea that soreness and getting a pump indicate an effective hypertrophy workout is also misleading. Soreness and pump can be satisfying, but they don’t directly correlate with muscle growth. Instead, focusing on progressive overload and ensuring each set challenges the muscle is what matters.
There’s also a belief that bodybuilders aren’t strong and powerlifters don’t care about muscle. In reality, elite bodybuilders are extremely strong, and competitive powerlifters have a lot of muscle mass. The differences come down to training emphasis and competition goals, not fundamental differences in adaptation.
Finally, one of the biggest mistakes lifters make is program hopping. Constantly switching between programs prevents real progress. Strength and size development take months, not weeks, so patience and consistency are key.
How to Structure Your Training Based on Experience Level
For beginners, the focus should be on getting stronger in the fundamental lifts. Training in the four to six rep range with compound movements builds both strength and muscle efficiently. Programs like Starting Strength or other strength-based novice programs are great for this phase.
For intermediates who have been training seriously for at least a year, a powerbuilding approach works well. This involves mixing strength and hypertrophy work within each session or across different training blocks. The key is balancing heavy low-rep work with higher rep muscle-building exercises.
For advanced lifters, specialization becomes more important. If you want to maximize strength, you may need to include dedicated hypertrophy blocks to build more muscle. If muscle growth is the goal, strategic strength phases can help you lift heavier weights, leading to more progressive overload in hypertrophy work.
Applying This to Your Training
If you want to put these principles into action, I’ve put together a complete set of workout programs from Wits & Weights Physique University. These programs include options for both strength and hypertrophy, with built-in tracking tools, exercise substitutions, and structured progressions.
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Transcript
Philip Pape: 0:01
Whether you just got into lifting or you've been training consistently for years, you might be aware of a paradox that going after maximum numbers seems to limit the development of your physique and muscle, while focusing on just hypertrophy or muscle size development doesn't seem to deliver the ultimate strength numbers that you want. Well, research shows that, beyond the novice stage, strength and size gains follow fundamentally different pathways. Today, we're talking about the science-backed differences between training for maximal strength versus optimal muscle growth and how to program for both without compromising either. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency. I'm your host, philip Pape, and today I'm going to address one of the most misunderstood relationships in fitness the connection between strength and hypertrophy, the fancy word for muscle growth and I want to give a shout out to my lifting buddy, tony. You know who you are as well as my client, len, who have pushed me recently to cover this topic in depth and it's a good one, because I see this confusion constantly with clients in our online communities, where people ask should I lift heavy to get stronger, or should I use lighter weights or more reps to build muscle? Or they'll say I'm getting stronger but I'm not seeing much size increase or development of my physique. Or, conversely, you know I look bigger but my lifts aren't really going up that much. Look bigger but my lifts aren't really going up that much. And the separation between these two training goals you know it's not as black and white as many believe, like the old school. Well, strength is one to five reps and hypertrophy is eight to 12, and so on. There is significant overlap, but there are also significant differences in how you should approach each one, and understanding this relationship is critical to design an effective program, or at least choose a program so that you know it gives you the specific results you want. Now, if you want to put these principles into action immediately, I've definitely got something special for you today, because I'm giving away a complete set of my physique and strength-focused workout programs from Wits and Weights Physique University totally free, giving you the whole thing for the current month for all skill levels, all types of equipment. There are swaps, there's video links in there, there are instructions novice, intermediate, glutes and legs. There are a lot of different programs and they're the exact programs that our WWPU members can choose from, including a built-in log, exercise substitutions for home and travel, you name it. So just go to witsandweightscom, slash free or click the link in the show notes. If you go to our website, just look for Physique Focus Programs I think it's called but just click the link in the show notes to get a free copy of that today.
Philip Pape: 3:04
All right, so let's clear up the confusion between strength and hypertrophy training once and for all, making this the definitive episode on the topic. First, let's define what the heck we're talking about. Strength training primarily focuses on increasing your ability to generate maximal force. How much weight you can lift for low reps, ideally for one rep, the most you can lift for one rep, but in that range. So think about powerlifting powerlifting competitions, where athletes perform one rep at the heaviest possible weight for their deadlift, their squat and their bench press. And this is something I didn't understand for many, many years, and once I did and focused on it when I was a beginner, the gain started to take off and it opened up a whole world of learning and understanding about this. But then at some point you start to hit a wall and you're like why am I not getting stronger, or why am I not getting the physique I want? So hypertrophy training, on the other hand, in somewhat contrast to strength, emphasizes increasing muscle size using the ultimate principle, which is mechanical tension, and it's often by doing it through moderate I'll call it moderate weights. I don't like to say lightweights, it's just moderate weights. It's sub-maximal or far from your max for mid to higher tier rep ranges like 6 to 15, up to 20, even up to 30. That's what I'm saying is there's quite a wide range where this can be effective.
Philip Pape: 4:32
Now, the interesting part here is that if you look at the science, we see that these adaptations share a fundamental driver and that is mechanical tension, which I just mentioned in the context of hypertrophy. But the way your body responds to this tension is going to differ, based on load volume and other variables, and here's where the 65% threshold becomes important. I think this is really important. So listen up. Research consistently shows that to build maximal strength, you generally okay, generally, this is a combination of the research need to train with at least 65% of your one rep max. Okay, that is 65% of your max. This is an intensity threshold that ensures that you have sufficient neural right, your nervous system, neural recruitment and adaptation. But if you're just trying to build muscle and I say that in quotes we're going to get to the differences and the overlaps. You can potentially go as low as 30% of your one rep max. Provided that you are training close to failure, you're still leveraging the principle of mechanical tension either way.
Philip Pape: 5:42
So I want to explain why this happens through the lens of the research. So in the early stages of strength gains this is when you're a complete beginner or a novice or even a late novice most improvement comes from neurological adaptations, not muscle growth. Your central nervous system, your CNS, becomes more efficient at recruiting muscle fibers and synchronizing your motor units, and studies show that in novice lifters, increases in muscle size might explain as little as 2% of the variance in strength gains. That's pretty telling, right? That tells you that it's not. It doesn't have much to do with muscle at all, because nearly all strength improvement comes from better neural efficiency and technique, and this is why you can gain massive strength very quickly early on, because you don't need to grow new muscle tissue to get there. You're simply training your body to coordinate better effectively.
Philip Pape: 6:38
So you guys probably know Dr Eric Helms, one of the guys I follow. He's a natural bodybuilder, he's a researcher, always on the podcast circuit Stronger by science, mass, all that good stuff and he explains this phenomenon very clearly. He says when you first start training your body and coordinate the muscles and that's where beginners again can double their strength but have minimal visible muscle gain, and that can be it can be both exhilarating because your numbers are going up, and frustrating because your physique isn't quite changing yet. And then, as you become more advanced, the relationship shifts very dramatically. For experienced lifters, muscle mass then becomes critical for further strength gains. You've heard of you know, working on your weak spots, for example, and it potentially explains 65% or more of the variability in strength increases.
Philip Pape: 7:39
Okay, listen to what I just said. When you're more advanced, muscle mass becomes more relevant for strength. So, in other words, once you've optimized your nervous system and your lifting technique, getting stronger largely means building bigger muscles. And so the chicken and egg is always confusing here, because it's like which one supports the other. The answer is yes, and this explains why elite power lifters are also quite jacked. They're quite muscular, right, they have to be, even if aesthetics isn't their primary goal, and you might see the big guys who carried a lot of extra weight. They then cut down because their goals change. Maybe they even go into bodybuilding and I won't say it's easy for them because it's going to depend on their shape and their symmetry as well. But you see that fat fall off and they've got tons of muscle slabs and slabs of meat on their frame and so at advanced levels, more muscle becomes necessary to continue breaking strength plateaus Really really important, because I think people get stuck in the mindset of doing the same.
Philip Pape: 8:42
You know, three by five program forever, and they are leaving lots of potential gains on the same. You know, three by five program forever, and they are leaving lots of potential gains on the table, even for their strength. So now that we understand the relationship between strength and size, kind of at a high level I don't want to get too deep into the weeds here. There's so much evidence and research out there that you could explore I want to talk about how training variables differ between strength focused and hypertrophy focused programs, and again we're going to get to where these overlap and how you can incorporate a little of both.
Philip Pape: 9:12
But I want to start with intensity right, Probably the most important variable that I learned early on, especially when you're getting started. Intensity is not sweating or feel, intensity is just the load on the bar, it's how heavy you lift relative to your maximum in this context. All right. So for strength development, research is clear on this Lifting heavier weights is superior and that means working at 80 to 100% of your 1RM for your core compound lifts. The heavy weight forces maximal motor unit recruitment from the first rep. That's what's important here, and it trains your nervous system to handle near maximum lows.
Philip Pape: 9:54
And you can go down other rabbit holes and argue about intensity versus volume. I think both are extremely important. I think using intensity and then jacking that up with volume is a great approach. Or going a little bit less intense and making up for in volume, or a little bit more intense and a little bit less volume. It all works and in some cases you cycle through both within one training block Very common. I just increased all of my max lifts. Doing that, I had a base phase where I had lots of volume sub-maximal but then I switched to a peaking phase where I was in the 80 to 90% range with much less volume, to train my nervous system to get ready to hit those max singles, which eventually I did, and it actually felt pretty easy when you take the right approach. So that's strength.
Philip Pape: 10:44
Now for hypertrophy, the intensity range is much broader, which is kind of neat, because if you're really if you don't care, I'll say care about your max PRs and you just want to look better, you want to build muscle, you want to be generally fit and strong, but not strong in terms of the maximum strength. A hypertrophy approach can be helpful and flexible. It can give you a lot of flexibility because the evidence confirms that muscle growth occurs effectively from as low as 30% up to 85% of your 1RM, as long as the sets are approaching muscular failure. And the key factor here again is mechanical tension, not necessarily how heavy the weight feels. And that's a distinction, because some people, I have to be honest, are not training hard enough. And the most recent program I ran and I have one of my programs in the Physique University that is inspired by Alex Bromley. He has a volume-based approach, but the key is he uses AMRAP sets while building that strength base so that you can tell whether you are heavy enough on your load and you're pushing hard enough, without having to rely on subjective feel. And I think objectivity is a really helpful tool throughout this process.
Philip Pape: 11:57
A 2017 meta-analysis by Brad Schoenfeld found that when sets are taken to momentary failure, muscle hypertrophy gains are similar across a wide range of loads. However and this is really important maximal strength was not equal across rep ranges. So let me just repeat that when you take sets to failure just for a moment, you're going to gain hypertrophy no matter the load, at least when it's above this 30% threshold, but your strength isn't the same across different rep ranges. The same review found that heavy load training produced significantly greater one-arm strength gains than light load training. It's not really a surprise to those of us that have done this and trained with this, but it's important to understand that that is the case. That is where some of the differences exist. The second major difference is volume For hypertrophy total volume, which is your sets times reps. You could also say times load, because that gives you your tonnage and remember we are talking about vastly different load levels, so it's important to have that in there.
Philip Pape: 13:01
Volume is a primary driver of growth. Meta-analysis indicate that multiple sets per exercise yield more hypertrophy than single set training, and higher weekly sets per muscle group usually around 10 to 20, tend to produce more growth than lower volumes. Now I've said before that as low as five to 10 can still get you a lot of the gains that you want, but it's not optimal, it's not going to get you the most. And for those of you really serious about this that are putting in the work, just understand you generally need about 10 to 20 sets per week and again, that's a pretty well-established range that gets talked about in the industry by now and it's it holds up, based on the research. So that's that's volume for hypertrophy. Now strength training even though you do need adequate volume, it places greater emphasis on intensity over volume. Right, you can't do as many sets with near maximal weights without your performance tanking and having recovery issues and tons of fatigue. And that's where quality becomes more important than quantity. And that is why, again, to go back to the program I just ran, when I was building the base I was far sub-maximal. I was around 65, 70, 75% of my max, doing more volume, and then, as I got closer to my test, I ramped down the volume and increased the intensity.
Philip Pape: 14:17
Another thing that changes quite a bit is the rest periods. Strength training typically uses longer rest intervals between your heavy sets three to five, six, seven, eight, 10 minutes, sometimes even longer for super heavy, let's say deadlifts and this allows for your ATP-CP this is the adenosine triphosphate, creatine phosphate energy system to replenish itself. Right, it gets depleted very quickly. It also allows your central nervous system to recover and now you can go after maximal performance on each set, which is ultimately the goal, whereas traditional muscle mass or hypertrophy training often uses shorter rests 60 seconds, minute and a half, two minutes, three minutes I usually like two to three minutes for most, unless you are intentionally going after building your work capacity or doing a superset or circuit style training where you are just trying to get to those near failure reps quickly and the theory here is you're trying to increase your metabolic stress. However, however important here, current evidence suggests that longer rest intervals, even with hypertrophy, can actually enhance the muscle growth because they allow you to have more training volume, and this goes back to the volume versus intensity, versus effective reps arguments. A study by Schoenfeld compared one minute versus three minute rests in a hypertrophy program and found that the group that used the longer three minute rests achieved significantly larger muscle thickness gains.
Philip Pape: 15:55
The last thing here is exercise selection is a pretty important variable. Strength programs are gonna focus heavily on compound lifts, compound movements that allow for maximal loading. These are the lifts where you use multiple joints for maximum use of muscle mass and loading. And that would be your squat, your bench press, your overhead press, your deadlifts, your even rows and things like that, whereas accessory work is also chosen primarily to improve these main lifts rather than necessarily build muscle. So those might be developmental or targeted variations of the squat, the bench, the dead, the overhead, et cetera.
Philip Pape: 16:35
Hypertrophy programs can still be centered or foundational around compound lifts, so don't think that it just excludes them. And when we say compound lifts, we also have to expand our vocabulary to include all the variations of compound lifts. Like a Romanian deadlift is still a compound lift, a pull-up is still a compound lift. However, hypertrophy programs will also include more isolation exercises to target specific muscles from multiple angles. A bodybuilder might do flat bench, incline bench, decline, bench flies for chest development. They might do them all in one day with a body part split. A powerlifter, on the other hand, might just do their flat bench and maybe one or two variations both on or on a different day, like their other upper body day, to address weak spots, and might have some other work in there. And that's the big caveat that there is a big overlap here, because when you look at Louis Simmons and the West Side guys and again I know they were equipped, they were enhanced and all that but if you look at something like the conjugate method or really any power building program, you do see a combination of both, with the theory that one enhances the other.
Philip Pape: 17:48
So I want to translate this science into practical guidelines for your training based on your primary goal, and this is going to be a really important episode to come back to when you're wondering if the program you're looking at or the program you're designing is meeting the goals you intend. So if your main objective is maximal strength, maybe you are a competitive power lifter, maybe you just want to be as strong as possible and, by the way, you can cycle through going after strength, going after muscle, doing a little both. If your objective is strength, here's how I would structure your training. I would center your workouts on compound lifts, using primarily the, let's say, one to six rep range at 80 to 90% of your 1RM when you get close to hitting your PR. That doesn't mean you're always working in the 80 to 90%, and that's one of the many caveats I have to give you here because you're probably going to want to add some volume at lower percentages of your max as you build to those lower rep ranges. And we see this in some of the classic programs like 531, 852, where you're cycling through slightly higher rep ranges, slightly sub max, and then you're getting more intense at lower reps and then you're cycling through those. You're also going to take long rest periods, and by long I mean longer than you're probably used to, but sufficient to increase quality as much as possible.
Philip Pape: 19:13
Quality is more important than quantity here. So at least bare minimum three to five minutes between your heavy sets. You're going to focus on quality over quantity and that just means that your form it should always be important, but when it comes to really heavy lifts you've really got to be dialed in on your form. This usually means get a coach who knows what the heck they're talking about, which is also hard to find sometimes. But get a coach you know a starting strength coach is a great idea. Even if you're not doing starting strength, they can help you out. You can definitely reach out to me. I can refer you to people locally or online. There are good people. There are good groups where you could do form checks. I think quality is really important because you're only doing, let's say, three to five sets and you're not doing that many reps, but you're really having. You've got to make sure those reps are done well.
Philip Pape: 20:06
The next thing I think about with strength training training for strength is training with explosive intent Really important. Listen to me here. This is not wishy-washy. Even though the weight is moving slowly, you're going to try to move it as fast as possible on the concentric, like in a squat. That's the up part of the squat. When you're driving up with your hips, you're going to explode into that movement. You're going to at least think that way to maximize your motor unit recruitment. This is important. This is something I didn't understand for a while. You know a lot gets talked about tempo and time under tension which, by the way, is not a thing that is effective at all time under tension. But explosive concentric movement is important. The eccentric it can vary. It depends on what you're going for. It depends on if you're going to have a pause in there and everything. But the explosive intent is important.
Philip Pape: 20:56
Avoid training to failure. That is another important thing. Your programming should be designed where you are somewhat sub-max but still heavy and doing the right amount of reps so that you're at least probably two or three, if not four, reps shy of failure. Now, four reps shy of failure. That is quote-unquote. Six RPE and I rarely use I never use RPE as a training variable. I only use it as a lagging indicator, as a metric to evaluate how you did on something, but not as a metric to tell. I only use it as a lagging uh indicator, as a metric to evaluate how you did on something, but not as a metric to tell you how you should do something. That's where I differ from from some folks.
Philip Pape: 21:30
But you want to stop short of. You don't want to be in a total grind where it's an utter failure on your main lifts. The only time that should really ever happen is if you are testing a one rep max, then it it's, there's a chance it could happen, right? That's just because you're really trying to push to your max ever. And then here's the other thing people miss. Okay, beyond the novice phase, you want to have strategic accessory work in there, because you're going to have weaknesses and you have propensity for injury when you're constantly doing the same lifts and you haven't used variations of those lifts to try to shore up your weak spots. You're going to keep getting kind of stronger in the primary muscle groups involved in that movement while everything else kind of lags, and we don't want that, and that's why there's always a case to be made for some variety once you get past the novice stage. So that's my thoughts on strength training, and again, those are principles.
Philip Pape: 22:23
I noticed I didn't give you an actual program, because there's a million ways to do that, but I will suggest a few things later on. If your primary goal is hypertrophy, you want to look bigger, you want to look more muscular right, many of us want that. Even if we are trying to push big lifts, we still want that as well. Here's what I suggest. You're going to use a blend, a mix of compound and isolation exercises. So this is where you've got to have some targeted work in there to hit muscles from different angles.
Philip Pape: 22:52
You're going to work in a wide variety of rep ranges. You're going to work probably predominantly in the middle, like 6 to 12, which is equivalent to about 60 to 80% of your one RM. Notice, that's still pretty heavy. But you're going to include some lower rep work three to five potentially, which sounds like strength, doesn't it? And higher rep work 12 to 20. I mean, if you're doing a leg press, 15, 20 reps believe it or not, it can be super, super effective. That or hack squat or something like that and it's still going to feel pretty darn heavy and hard with all those reps.
Philip Pape: 23:25
Doing lots of reps is its own mental challenge compared to doing lower reps but heavy, and then you're going to take these sets pretty close to failure most of the time. If you're working in the low rep range, like three to five, you still may be more in that strength mindset of leaving a little bit in the tank. It should be two, three, four reps. But with most of the other stuff, your accessories and especially your isolation movements you're probably going to be around one to three reps of failure. You're rarely going to go all the way to failure, but it's totally doable to do that with something like bicep curls, where you just keep going, you keep going, you keep going and you literally cannot get another technical rep and then you failed and that's okay. But there are some things where you don't want to do that.
Philip Pape: 24:06
And then we mentioned volume. Volume is really important here because you want to accumulate enough volume to grow your muscles. So that is 10 to 20 sets per muscle group per week. If you are time starved, if you just have to be as efficient as possible, going as low as five could give you some results, but they're not gonna be optimal. So 10 to 20 is solid. The rest periods are gonna be, in general, two to three minutes, but some may be as low as a minute or even 30 seconds. Some small isolation work. Or, of course, if you're doing things like drop sets, mile reps, rest, pause sets things that I'm not even gonna get to detail on here but supersets things that I'm not even going to get to detail on here, but a lot of the fun bodybuilding stuff, supersets and so on. They're very time efficient ways to train and still get a similar result but fit more work into less time. But generally I'm thinking two to three minutes. So if I'm going to do pull-ups, I'm going to rest two to three minutes. If I'm doing moderately heavy barbell curls, I'm going to go two to three minutes. Now, if I'm doing 20 reps of dumbbell, hammer curls with rest pause sets, well, those by definition are going to be probably only about 30 seconds. You're also going to when you do bodybuilding or hypertrophy type work.
Philip Pape: 25:17
There is sometimes a benefit to having a really controlled eccentric. That's the lowering phase. Now, this is not because of time under tension. This is more so that you get that pause in the bottom and that stretch in the lengthened position, and it also makes it a little bit harder to come back. You're taking out the stretch reflex. I found that's really good for tendons and connective tissue as well. So one of the things I've learned a lot from injuries and surgeries is the value of pausing.
Philip Pape: 25:45
And when I do, for example, an easy bar curl, I don't just go all the way down and just smack it back up, back and forth like bouncing out of the bottom. I go all the way down almost fully unlocked. I don't go all the way 100% unlocked, but pretty close to it, where it's a very stretched bicep, I pause for a half second and then go again. It's not like I'm waiting down there for a minute, but try it out. It will make it a little harder, you will have to drop the load slightly, but you'll get in a very effective workout.
Philip Pape: 26:11
And then, of course, you want to train each muscle group at least twice per week, and this is more of the frequency variable that we didn't really touch on yet. We talked about intensity, we talked about volume, but frequency is also important, and you're going to want to hit every muscle group at least twice a week, not necessarily directly, right? If you hit triceps one day and you're doing close grip bench the other day, you hit your triceps twice. So directly and indirectly, but one at least once directly and then and then at least twice or more directly or indirectly. Total, now, that's strength and that's hypertrophy. But where most people get confused is well, I want both, like I want to have my cake and eat it too, and you kind of can.
Philip Pape: 26:53
Okay, this is where power building comes in. The quote unquote power building, and I have no problem with the term. Some people roll their eyes. Oh, power building, what is that? I don't think we have to judge the term, just define what it means. And so I think it's an excellent approach for intermediate lifters.
Philip Pape: 27:07
I got introduced to it through my coach, andy Baker. He's been on the show like three times, I think he has the record for being on the show, and since then I've discovered lots of other coaches who have a similar style approach to programming. It's a lot of fun. It covers both strength and hypertrophy, both styles. It helps you learn a lot about your form, about lifts, about how to program for yourself, about how to manage fatigue and recovery. I'm like a walking sales pitch for it because I think, like most, let's say, the guys I identify with in their forties who don't have a crap ton of time, they have some time and they dedicate time to training for sure, maybe four days a week for an hour, hour and a half, but they want to get both and they're like well, if I just focus on going after max PRS, my muscle development's going to lag. If I just go after bodybuilding, I'm going to not get those PRS that I really want.
Philip Pape: 27:55
Okay, you can, you can combine both, and so to do that, you're usually going to start your training session with a heavy compound lift or two in that strength regime, three to six rep range. Maybe you're cycling through whatever. You're then going to follow it with some accessory or targeted developmental work that gets you a little bit of hypertrophy, a little bit of strength support. Right, it works on your weak spots. But also maybe you're in the eight to 12 range for some muscle growth as well, and it really depends on the movement, some parts of your work training block you might be doing goblet squats as your variation, others you might be doing safety bar, heel elevated squats, and one might be more fatiguing than the other. So you're going to have to judge how many sets you're going to end up doing, how much rest you need and what rep ranges you work in.
Philip Pape: 28:44
And then you're going to include both strength specific exercises to support the you know, the competition lifts basically, but also bodybuilding style isolation work. So it's sort of a whole gamut, kind of like a spectrum, and it usually looks like compound accessory isolation, each of those being one or two lifts. So a total of anywhere from three to six, seven or eight lifts, depending on how much time you have and how many sets you're doing, how much volume you can take, how much recoverability you have. And then you're going to periodize your training over time. You might spend part of that time let's say four to eight weeks, not really doing many of the main lifts but just doing a lot of accessory versions of them and emphasizing hypertrophy. But then you might spend 48 weeks really just focusing a lot on the big lifts and again, nothing precludes you from going all in on strength for a while and all in on hypertrophy for a while, and all of this stuff recognizes the fundamental truth that strength and size complement each other, and you will be better for it if you do cycle through. I am not talking about program hopping. I'm talking about spending a methodical, dedicated length of time in one mode learn about it, grow from it, get everything you can from it and then say, okay, I have achieved some level of growth that is meaningful to me. Now I'm going to go and work on a different part of my growth, because that kind of variety itself can be very powerful. More muscles does give you greater strength potential. Getting stronger does allow you to use heavier weights for your hypertrophy work, and so it creates a virtuous positive feedback loop. I'm experiencing that right now. I just hit my maxes last week my squat bench and dead and now I'm back to doing a little bit more power building and I'm finding that I'm way stronger in a bunch of my accessory and isolation lifts. Well, great, what does that allow me to do? That allows me to build more muscle from those. You can't just stay stuck in one.
Philip Pape: 30:44
One of the guys I follow. He was on the show he owns Macrofactor he's part of Stronger by Science is Greg Knuckles. You guys know Greg Knuckles, If not, look him up. Great guy, respected, very respected strength researcher. He nerds out on this stuff and he summarizes this strength hypertrophy relationship perfectly. He said early on in training, muscle mass explains only a few percent of strength gains and in experienced lifters it can explain 65% or more. And I mentioned that earlier and I wanted to reiterate it here in a single quote. All right, when you start you've got to get strong and as you get more experience you can do a little of both, and this shows why an integrated approach is going to yield the best result. When you become more advanced and more advanced doesn't take long to get to. If you do this right, your novice phase might be six months long, maybe nine months, maybe a year max, but then you're an intermediate lifter, then you go after it.
Philip Pape: 31:39
So, as we clarify this relationship between strength and hypertrophy, I want to address some of the mistakes and misconceptions that could be holding you back right now listening to this, because you've heard it over and over in the fitness industry and it's just plain wrong. Okay, the first one is this notion that you must train super heavy to build muscle. Now I respect the starting strength guys, mark Ripoteau, I came through that world. It changed my life. Everyone should buy Starting Strength. In fact, I think Starting Strength is a phenomenal beginner program for anybody to follow and if If you just follow it, you're going to be golden.
Philip Pape: 32:13
However, there is a lot of discussion about how only training that way is sufficient to build muscle, and I know they don't always mean that. What they're saying is for novices don't worry about building muscle, just get strong and the muscle is going to follow. That is true, I do agree with that. But if your goal is to build muscle, you don't necessarily need the heavy close to maximum load training. Goal is to build muscle, you don't necessarily need the heavy close to maximum load training. Research definitively shows that moderate weights as low as 30% of your 1RM can build just as much muscle as heavy weights, provided the sets are taken near failure. The key is always again, mechanical tension and effort, not absolute load, and this is great news if you just want to enjoy the process of building muscle. You have joint issues. Maybe you have limited equipment that you can't get to those loads. You're just not interested in maximal strength. Now I still think that's going to limit you long-term in terms of overall size and muscle development, but you're still going to build a ton of muscle.
Philip Pape: 33:13
The second thing is the idea that you can get as strong as possible without focusing on building muscle, and I don't think the research supports that. I think, early on, getting as strong as possible is the way to go. It's very efficient. It's what you need because beginners can get stronger through neural adaptations without much increase in size, but advanced lifters almost universally need more muscle to keep getting stronger. If you've been training for years and your strength has plateaued, then focusing on hypertrophy for a while might be exactly what you need. And I hear it anecdotally every day.
Philip Pape: 33:46
Somebody says look, I took a break from going. After PRs, I worked on a more well-rounded training program for muscular development. I came back and a lot of my lifts increased. Now it doesn't mean it's gonna directly translate to a specific lift right away, but it's gonna allow you to get to new levels of maximal strength and I think that's an important caveat or an important nuance in that. For example, the program that I just ran I didn't just start right away in triples, doubles and singles in the hopes that I just ran. I didn't just start right away in triples, doubles and singles in the hopes that I was going to get new PRs. No, I actually took a step back and I did more volume to get exposed to the movement patterns while being in more of a hypertrophy range, and then I started to shift more toward the strength range as it supported my strength and then I could hit new numbers. Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense.
Philip Pape: 34:36
The third big myth is that getting a pump, feeling the burn, getting sore, means an effective hypertrophy workout. I am all for getting a pump. It's fun. It is fun and you will get sore when you're exposed to a movement for the first time or two. That's totally normal. And while metabolic stress contributes a little bit to growth, again mechanical tension is the primary driver. The more research has come out, the more we've discovered that's the case. A workout that leaves you pumped and sore is not necessarily better for muscle growth than one focused on progressively loading, using good form and getting that mechanical tension. And you know you're hitting mechanical tension. When you're somewhat close to failure and you're actually able to lift more the next time, I mean that's a really good indicator that you're getting it, not that you're sore, you're getting a pump, et cetera.
Philip Pape: 35:29
And then another misconception is thinking that bodybuilders are not strong or that powerlifters don't care about muscle, Because at the elite level I've talked to these guys directly or on the podcast, or I've listened to them there's a lot more specialization at the elite level and most successful bodybuilders are super strong. They could not get to the size they are without being strong. Most accomplished power lifters they've built tons of muscle mass. Just stop trying to separate them as if they are in separate vacuums. They are not the difference in those athletes. Their training emphasis and their competition goals cause them to train a bit differently, but their fundamental physiological adaptations are the same.
Philip Pape: 36:18
The last thing I want to say that is super important and useful program hopping is not going to help you. Program hopping between strength and hypertrophy approaches like really quickly, within just like a few weeks at a time, without giving it either time to work, is going to set you back for years. You're just gonna be stuck. You've gotta give it time and you have to have patience. Both strength and size development require consistently training, showing up to the gym, progressive loading over time, over months and over years period. I'm sorry to say it, but I'm not sorry, because once you get into it and you realize how fun the process itself can be, you are not fixated on that final number. There is no final number. I look back every year and I say, well, I wanted to accomplish X and I realized I accomplished Y, and Y might be more or less than X and it might be different than X, but I've grown and that's really important. And then you learn from that. But if you jump between programs every few weeks, you're not going to have the accumulation of adaptations, of volume, of even frequency, needed for significant progress. So stop doing it.
Philip Pape: 37:29
So now that we've covered the science and the practice, I want to give you one more thing that might change how you view your training career, and that's what it is. If you're listening to Wits and Weights, strength training should be at the top of your list numero uno. It is the driver of body composition more than anything else. Whether you're trying to lose fat, build muscle, whatever, look great, feel great, get lean, the relationship between strength and hypertrophy is going to change dramatically based on how long you've been training. So I want you to think about this your training career when you're a beginner a lot of you are. You're listening to me. You're thinking I got to get off the couch, I got to start training. Or maybe I used to work out years ago, I've got to get back to it. Or maybe I've been going to the gym for 10 years but I'm not really getting the results.
Philip Pape: 38:17
You're a beginner. You are a beginner. If you don't feel like right now you are constantly getting stronger and growing and building muscle, you're doing something wrong and you're a beginner and that's okay. I envy you because you could now, doing it the right way, get jacked and strong so quickly. And so beginners want to focus primarily on getting stronger. In that moderate rep range, I'll say four to six to really narrow it down for you. Right, fives are classically thrown out there because of starting strength and what is it called? Strong lifts? Five by five, all of those, but even like five to 10, you know, through compound lifts you're just going to get so strong and you're going to build some size.
Philip Pape: 38:56
Once you get past that first few weeks of neuromuscular efficiency and actually start adding new muscle, it is the most efficient path period. The neurological adaptations come quickly. They call them newbie gains. The moderate volume provides enough stimulus for initial growth. And then you have a lot of frequency in that you are like squatting every session. You're deadlifting every session and you can do that. Don't think that you need to squat once every two weeks. You're not advanced enough to do that. You need to do it frequently.
Philip Pape: 39:26
So a program like Starting Strength, as mentioned before, is ideal for this. And you know, if I remember to do so, I'm going to throw a link in. No, you know what, I'm not going to throw a link in my show notes. I already have a link to the workout programs from Physique University in the show notes and in that file. All you have to do is ask for it. You'll download it In that file. If you go to the novice tab, it actually mentions starting strength and it points you to resources, a walkthrough that I've done on it, all the things you need to know. It's all in there, okay, and I give you other options for novice programs as well. These things will produce strength and visible muscle gains. If you're a novice and those first six, nine, 12 months are magical, if you do it consistently, if you eat enough, if you sleep enough, it's amazing. I am jealous for you. You've got to get on that right now.
Philip Pape: 40:13
Now for intermediates who have been training for, say, one to three years, seriously doing it the right way, using a barbell, using heavy implements, whatever it takes to get stronger from wherever you were, wherever you started, power building, I think, is great. I think the power building approach might be I don't want to say yields the quote unquote best results. That's a subjective statement. But it gives you enough heavy work to keep developing that neurological efficiency and keep those movement patterns in there, but also sufficient volume, variety, frequency of smaller isolation work to continue building muscle. So it's a nice blend if you have the time and the inclination for it. It's also a lot of fun. I think it's a great way to just keep yourself motivated.
Philip Pape: 40:56
And now, if you're more advanced than that, if you're pushing four, five, six years of serious progressive training getting strong, building muscle, you're going to need greater specialization period. Your nervous system adaptations are pretty much tapped out. They've maxed out. Further strength gains are going to correlate very heavily on increasing your muscle size, as we've mentioned a couple of times already. I mean this is why elite power lifters include distinct hypertrophy blocks in their training cycle. This is why Westside has power building, slash hypertrophy work constantly in there. They've got speed work, they've got bands and chains accommodating resistance. All of this specialization.
Philip Pape: 41:36
You know you may have a part of your body that does not respond as quickly as others. Maybe it's your biceps, maybe it's your back, maybe it's your calves guys, you know the calves are tough for a lot of us Maybe it's your glutes, whatever it is that you want to get bigger, you might have to specialize, you might need more frequency or a more targeted approach. And so you know, when you just look at competitive power lifters including those and you understand why and conversely, bodybuilders right, who are advanced bodybuilders, they're going to spend time in some strength periods in the off season, when they're eating, when they're not dieting right, because dieting is a big part of bodybuilding leading up to competition. But in the improvement season, the off season, they're going to be pushing their strength in the key lifts, not to mention the accessories and the isolation work. They want to be able to handle heavier weights, they want to have better connective tissue and joint health and ability to handle their fatigue and their recovery. And they might not test their 1RMs all the time, but they will track their strength to ensure that they're actually improving and getting stronger.
Philip Pape: 42:40
So the surprising truth, I'll say, is that for most of us, who I would call enthusiasts or recreational lifters, the goals of strength and hypertrophy are not competing, they're complementary. And if you know how to balance and periodize both types of training kind of like, we balance and periodize fat loss and muscle building phases, calorie deficits and calorie surpluses, and it's based on your experience level, based on the year time of year, based on your personal preferences and enjoyment, based on how much stress you have right now, based on how much recoverability you have, based on your diet itself. Your diet and your training actually go hand in hand as to which one you focus on when. If you're trying to max out your PRs, you probably should be doing that while you're eating a bunch of food and sleeping right, not in a dieting phase. You're just not going to. So if you can do that, you can achieve impressive gains in both, and you're not going to sacrifice either. You're not. It's going to work out, it really will. And isn't that liberating to know that you do not have to choose between being strong and looking strong right, if you have smart programming, you can have both.
Philip Pape: 43:44
So the next time that you are designing your training program or evaluating whether you should follow this strength-focused program here, this power-building program here, this hypertrophy program here, remember a few things from this episode and re-review this episode. I think it's important. Number one both strength and hypertrophy training rely on mechanical tension, but they optimize different aspects of it. Number two is that strength requires heavier loads, usually up above 65% of your 1RM, ideally around 80% or higher to maximize the neural adaptations, the movement patterns. Number three is that hypertrophy can occur across a much broader range of loads, as low as 30% of your 1RM, as long as you're training hard, as long as your effort is sufficient to get close to failure, to get that mechanical tension.
Philip Pape: 44:33
Number four if you're a beginner, get strong, get strong in the compound movements, ideally with a barbell. Number five if you're an intermediate, blend heavy strength work with hypertrophy work and kind of work them both in in a power building style. That's usually an efficient way to do it. And then, number six, if you're advanced, you've got to specialize and recognize that size and strength will always continue to be interconnected. So I want you to understand the science at this point is pretty clear. We're not really fuzzy on this. If you understand the relationship between strength and hypertrophy, you can train more intelligently and efficiently, saving time, avoiding the confusion that plagues so many lifters out there that do not have a clue. And if you think you don't have a clue, listen to this episode at least two times and reach out for help.
Philip Pape: 45:20
Go, download my programs. Join Wits and Weights Physique University. We'll help you figure it all out. And by applying these evidence-based principles. That's what they are. They're principles. It's not specific methods or programs. It's principles. If you can apply them, you're going to optimize your results. You will, I guarantee it. It's physics, it's biology. It's going to work, whether your goal is to lift more weight, build more muscle or both, all right. So if you're ready to put these principles into action because that is what you need next, guys, ladies and gentlemen, you need action.
Philip Pape: 45:51
I've created a complete set of strength and physique focused workout programs from Whitson Weights Physique University. We drop a new set every month and I'm giving you the latest month if you use the link in my show notes and I've got programs in there for novice, intermediate, advanced, different levels of equipment, different days per week. The programs incorporate both strength and hypertrophy elements and they give you balanced development depending on where you are in your training age. There's a built-in log, there's exercise substitutions, there's links to videos. It's got everything. Guys, what are you waiting for? It's totally free. Go to witsowheightscom, slash free or, better yet, just click the link in the show notes to download your free copy today. Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights, and remember, with the right training approach, you don't have to choose between being strong and looking strong. You can have both. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.
