#128 Tracee Talks – Strength Training Vs. Hypertrophy Training

Strength Training Vs. Hypertrophy Training
What about hypertrophy training – ever heard of that before? Well, today we are going to look at strength training and hypertrophy training, describing each one for what they are. This exploration will help you answer the question: Which is the right one for you?

Hypertrophy Training:
We talk about muscle hypertrophy when we are talking about the growth and increase of muscle cells and their size. Muscular hypertrophy occurs usually as a result of doing physical exercises such as weight-lifting.

When you start exercising your muscles, first there will be an increase in the nerve impulses which will cause your muscles to contract. This in itself will result in strength gain even though you don’t see much difference in the muscle size. But as you continue with your exercising, an interaction of the responses of the nervous system results in, over months, an increase in protein synthesis – that’s when the muscle cells start to get stronger and larger. 

Two essential components are necessary for your muscles to grow – stimulation, as well as repair. The stimulation part occurs when the muscles are contracting, or when you are actually exercising the muscle. Every time you exercise the muscles, then contraction occurs. Repeat contractions during your workouts will cause damage to the muscle fibers internally. 

The muscle fibers get broken down during the course of your workout and once they are damaged, they get ready to repair themselves – this is when and where you will notice muscle growth occurring. This repair of the muscle fiber usually occurs after your workout when your muscles are in a resting mode. New fibers will be produced to help to repair and also replace the damaged ones. More fibers will even be produced to make up for the damaged ones – this is what causes muscle growth. 

The whole process of hypertrophy is the same for everybody. But in saying that, the results will probably be different from others who are doing the same workouts as you. These differences are due to the genetic makeup of each individual person’s muscles. 

Some people, when doing hypertrophy training, will show results much faster than others. The appearance and shape of muscles are also factors that are genetically based. Maybe you are desperate to have round, plump biceps, and you notice yours don’t look anything like the person that started at the same time as you. But actually, the shape of the muscles is determined by the muscle-tendon length, and tendon length is a genetic factor. 

If you want bigger muscles, it is better that you have shorter muscle tendons. If someone has very long muscle tendons, they might see less growth and muscle shaping than those with the shorter muscle tendons, even though both are doing the same weight lifting.

What are the exercises to be done for muscle hypertrophy?

There are a variety of methods of weight training which make use of exercise machines, free weights, resistance bands, and bodyweight exercises. There are also different training regimens where you vary the load weight and the number of repetitions as well as the rest intervals between the sets of repetitions. They all have their own proponents, but the end results might depend a lot on the dedication you put into your workouts, but also on your body type as well.

What are the exercises to be done for muscle hypertrophy?
Before you consider doing hypertrophy training, however, you should assess your posture, technique, and basic fitness, cardiovascular health, and flexibility as these things impact safety and success greatly. Without that solid foundation, all your aspirations might be short-lived and you might even experience fatigue and injury and just want to give up before you even reach your gains.

Strength training:
Strength training is often referred to as resistance training. Strength training involves the progressive use of resistive loads and various training modalities which are meant to promote fitness, health, and sports performance.

First of all, strength training makes you strong in a few ways. It builds muscle tissue and it improves your inter- and intra-muscular coordination so that you can coordinate all moving parts. You will see how quickly you generate force to move against resistance. 

It strengthens your tendons, making your muscles bigger. It preserves and enhances muscle mass, as well as your metabolic rate. It improves your bone density. It improves insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance. It lowers the risk of injury to yourself. It improves your ability to do your daily activities. It improves your balance. It enhances endurance, strength, speed, power, and agility. It improves your overall body composition. It decreases bad cholesterol levels and also blood pressure. It improves your aerobic capacity.

The difference:
With strength training, you work on making yourself stronger, making your body stronger, like how much weight you are able to move in a single repetition. With hypertrophy training, it is more about the size of your muscles. 

If you want to work on both types, a good suggestion is to work on them periodically, following a program, say, of doing strength training for 6–8 weeks, and then doing hypertrophy training for 6 weeks and so on. The best of both worlds! 

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