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Strength vs Size: Know the Difference

Strength vs Size: Know the Difference

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Introduction

When it comes to training for strength and size, there are a lot of misconceptions and confusion about what each one actually is.

Some people think that strength and size are the same thing, while others think that you can only achieve one or the other. The reality is that both strength and size are important, and they can be developed independently or together.

In this article, we will unpack the differences between strength and size and explain how you can train for each one. We will also provide examples of what type of training program will help you achieve your specific goals.

What Is Strength and What Is Size?

Strength and size are two different measures of muscular development.

Strength is the ability to generate force against an external resistance, while size is the relative measure of muscle mass. Strength is important for everyday activities, such as carrying groceries or lifting a suitcase, while size is important for esthetic appearance and performance in athletics.

There are many ways to train for strength and size, but the best approach depends on the individual’s goals and training history.

The Science Behind Strength and Size

Strength and size are two of the most coveted physical qualities a person can possess.

But what are they, and what’s the difference?

Strength is the ability to generate force, while size is the accumulation of muscle mass. Size is often mistaken for strength, but it’s important to understand the two are not synonymous. A person can be big but weak, or small but strong. The determining factor between strength and size is the type of muscle fiber. Size is determined by the number of muscle fibers, while strength is determined by the ability of those fibers to generate force. Muscles are extremely important to your body, and not just because they help you look good at the pool. They do many things to keep you alive and help in daily tasks like locomotion and lifting objects. 

 

Muscle tissues are made up of cells called muscle fibers. Each muscle fiber contains many myofibrils — the parts of the muscle fiber that contract. The myofibrils line up right next to each other, giving muscles a striped, or striated, appearance. Myofibrils contract because of the sliding action of two filamentous cytoskeletal proteins, called actin and myosin: Actin filaments, or thin filaments, consist of two strands of actin wound around each other. Myosin filaments, or thick filaments, contain groups of myosin. Myosin filaments have bulbous ends called myosin heads; in muscle, multiple strands of myosin arrange with their heads pointed in opposite directions so that both ends of thick filaments look bulbous. Thin and thick filaments are organized into repeating units called sarcomeres. Dark lines called Z-lines mark off the boundaries of each sarcomere. Thin filaments attach to the Z-lines at both ends of the sarcomere, while thick filaments are unattached. Each myofibril contains thousands of sarcomeres.

Types of muscle fibers

Skeletal muscles are made up of individual muscle fibers. And like muscles themselves, not all muscle fibers are the same. There are two types of skeletal muscle fibers, fast-twitch, and slow-twitch, and they each have different functions that are important to understand when it comes to movement and exercise programming.

So What Does Hypertrophy AKA SIZE Mean?

Hypertrophy is termed as the enlargement of an organ or tissue from the increase in the size of its cells, in this case, the muscle as we are talking about muscle hypertrophy. Muscle hypertrophy refers to an increase in muscle mass. This usually manifests as an increase in muscle size and strength.

There are two distinct types of hypertrophies:

  1. Myofibrillar Hypertrophy- Each fiber of the muscle cell increases in size. Relatively heavier loads with lower reps cause the most optimal myofibrillar hypertrophy.
  1. Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy- Fibre does not increase in size, but its ability to store glycolytic enzymes and fluids increases. Relatively lighter loads with higher reps cause the most optimal sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. Although these are termed different, their relation to one another is ambiguous.
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WHAT CAUSES HYPERTROPHY?

MECHANICAL TENSION

Mechanical tension is created by using a heavy load and performing exercises through a full range of motion for a while. The time the muscle spends under tension provided by the external load (barbell, dumbbell, etc) creates mechanical tension in the muscle. When you lift weights through a full range of motion, the muscles are placed under a combination of passive and active tension since they are stretched while being activated. Why is mechanical tension such a strong driver of hypertrophy? Think of the environment we live in, what’s a constant force/stressor we have to deal with? Gravity. Over time, our bodies have adapted and evolved to better handle the constant force of gravity. That’s why we have such well-developed musculoskeletal systems.

Our bodies are very good at responding to mechanical loads. We have several sensors that are responsible for detecting loads and forces and these sensors can generate growth signals as a response to constantly increased loads like a training program would produce. Mechanical tension is the most important factor in training-induced muscle hypertrophy. Mechanosensory receptors (Pacinian corpuscles, Meissner’s corpuscles) are sensitive to both the magnitude and the duration of loading, and these stimuli can directly mediate intracellular signaling to bring about hypertrophic adaptations.

There are two main ways to induce large amounts of mechanical tension and subsequent growth. The first is to lift heavier weights. Studies show that subjects training in the 60-90% 1RM range had much a higher protein synthesis response to training than subjects who used lighter loads. The second way is to lift lighter weights to failure – studies show that lifting lighter weights to failure is just as effective at inducing hypertrophy as lifting heavier weights. Use both strategies in your training to create optimal amounts of tension on the muscle and force it to respond with growth.

METABOLIC STRESS

Do you know when you get a ‘sick pump’ in the gym? That’s metabolic stress.

You get a build-up of metabolites and the reduced pH of blood, both of which can influence muscle remodeling. Metabolites such as lactate, phosphate, hydrogen ions, and glucose metabolites build up as the muscle fills with blood and is starved of oxygen, there are various ways this can be produced.

When we have a ‘pump’ in our muscles, cells are swelling up with water, this creates intracellular pressure in the cell. It’s thought that this pressure is perceived as a threat to muscle cell integrity and causes the cell to respond by reinforcing its structure. Much like pumping a balloon with water, and were as a balloon would pop, your muscle cell grows stronger to stop this occurring.

Why does metabolic stress help ‘gains’ so much? There are a few theories to this method. The first, and most difficult to prove, is that metabolite accumulation in and of itself acts as a sensor that drives growth signals. Another, and much more plausible theory, is that we see an increase in muscle activation when metabolites begin to accumulate in the muscle – probably due to both a reduction in cellular pH and acceleration of motor unit fatigue. This increase in muscle activation can induce mechanical tension on more muscle fibers which would cause more growth when compared to similar exercise with less muscle activation. The last theory is that the accumulation of metabolites causes cell swelling, much like an intense muscle pump. This cell swelling exerts a type of mechanical tension on the muscle fiber from the inside-out that may signal to the cell a need to expand and grow to better withstand this stress.

You can train at lighter loads with higher reps and shorter rest periods. This causes the muscle to perform a ton of work with very little relaxation time which leads to metabolite accumulation.

MUSCLE DAMAGE

Muscle damage is a result of performing new exercises or heavy eccentric loading through a full range of motion. This damage is microscopic, mostly affecting the structural components of a muscle fiber. When a muscle fiber is damaged, we see an inflammation response by the body, increased protein breakdown, and even increased muscle enzymes, like creatine kinase, leak into the bloodstream from the damaged cell. Experienced lifters typically undergo less muscle damage than novel lifters as they’re not performing new exercises as often and have built adaptation to eccentric training.

How to achieve Hypertrophy?

VOLUME

Volume is the main driver of hypertrophy. A clear dose-response relationship has been found between volume and hypertrophy; higher training volumes correlate with greater muscle protein accretion, at least up to a given threshold intensity increasing training volume progressively throughout a training cycle. The cycle begins with a maintenance volume dose, and then the volume is systematically increased to culminate in a brief cycle at the highest tolerable dose that elicits functional overreaching, thereby eliciting a super-compensatory hypertrophic response. After a period of active recovery, the process repeats, beginning with the maintenance dose to help reset the muscles’ volume sensitivity.

SETS FOR HYPERTROPHY

Hypertrophy appears with increasing volumes of up to 6-8 hard sets in a single training session. This is approximately 12 – 24 weekly sets when training each muscle 2-3 days per week. Individual results may vary substantially from these averages, with some individuals having volume ceilings much higher than 8 sets per session or 20 weekly sets. it is best to do it in small increments (20%).

FREQUENCY

There is a volume/frequency interaction. There is some evidence of a maximum effective dose per training session, although it will vary from one individual to the next. To increase weekly volume, rather than continuing to increase the volume above this ceiling per session, it’s better to split weekly volume up into higher frequencies. When increasing set volume, the classic “bro-split” of blasting a muscle group for very high volumes (like 20 sets) once per week is likely an inferior way to train, and it is better to split the volume up into frequencies of 2-3 days per week.

REP RANGES

The muscles benefit from weights in the 30%-85% 1RM range, which in many people roughly translates to a weight that results in between 5 and 30 reps on a first set taken to failure. We can split this range into heavy (5-10,) moderate (10-20), and light (20-30) categories.

INTENSIFICATION TECHNIQUES:

MYOREPS

Myo-reps involves first performing an “activation” set, where a relatively lower load is lifted to near-failure, typically in the 12-30 repetition range. Then, a series of lower-rep “back-off” sets are completed with the same weight, e.g., 3-5 reps. These sets are repeated using 20-30 second rest intervals(3-5 long breaths) until the individual can no longer complete the targeted number of reps.

GIANT SETS

Giant sets give you a certain weight to lift, and a goal of total reps over as many sets as it takes. An example is aiming to do 100lbs for however many sets it takes to get 60 total reps while taking normal rest between each set. Such an approach can take the focus off of having to match or exceed the per-set reps you did last week, and can thus let you super-focus on technique and the mind-muscle connection, thus potentially improving both and getting more out of the training with exercises that can demand lots of technique and mind-muscle connection to be effective.

DROP SETS

A drop set is a training strategy that takes the muscles to failure by continuously “dropping” (reducing) the weight until the person can’t complete any more reps For example, a client will do as many squat reps as they can at a high weight. Once they reach failure at that weight, they will quickly reduce the weight and continue until failure. When they reach failure again, they will reduce the weight and continue to squat until failure

TRAINING TO FAILURE

We have all heard that you should train till failure if you want to gain a considerable amount of muscle, but is this true? Most of your favorite bodybuilders from the Golden Era swear that they went beyond failure, well during their time, it was what everyone was doing as research was very limited, but current research counters it and suggests it to be suboptimal.

What Is Training To Failure?

Training to failure is when you are unable to complete another repetition with good form (referred to as ‘Technical Failure’).

The debate over the necessity of failure has intensified over the years. The reviewed study from Santanielo et al. (11) was a within-subjects design and had 14 trained men perform leg extensions and leg press twice per week for 10 weeks. Subjects trained one leg to failure at 75% of one-repetition maximum (1RM) on both exercises, and the other leg shy of failure.

The study showed that performing leg presses and leg extensions to a 1-2 RIR (reps in reserve), on average, produced similar leg extension strength gains and similar if not slightly greater quad hypertrophy and leg press strength gains than failure training over eight weeks. Most of the recent literature which has had individuals train more than once per week has shown similar (7) (8)or greater (9) (10)hypertrophic adaptations in favor of non-failure versus failure training.

Training to failure, every workout generates a ton of local and systemic fatigue, which won’t allow you to grow in size or strength. It violates the GAS (General Adaptation Syndrome) principle, according to which; to see the adaptations (benefits of strength training) an organism should have a sufficient period of rest.

Despite being a non-failure advocate, I’m sensitive to the other side because I get the impulse behind it. The impulse to think that training until you can’t do any more reps is superior is not an irrational thought. The effective reps paradigm suggests that you achieve maximal motor unit recruitment during the last five reps of a set to failure, and there is more mechanical tension for each rep closer to failure; thus, each rep closer to failure causes more growth. So training to failure can and should be strategically used and periodized by the lifter, at the end of the training cycle to maximize hypertrophy and strength.

That is why the final takeaway message should be:

Training to failure or a specific proximity to failure should not be an all-or-none thing. Instead, a lifter should be strategic about where they use failure training, which is more suited to most single-joint movements or compound movements with lower reps performed toward the end of a training week.

The Anabolic Window and The 30 Min Myth

The Anabolic Window is a term used to describe the 30-60 minute period right after exercise during which nutrition can shift the body from a catabolic state to an anabolic one.

In the bro-science world it means that after finishing your workout you should be drinking a protein shake to maximize your gains. The belief that there’s an anabolic window after exercise comes from few studies done in 1990s . Those studies showed that there was increased Muscle Protein Synthesis or MPS when amino acids were consumed right after working out. So the question is, is there an anabolic window? There are several studies published but none of them proved that there is a difference in overall hypertrophy if protein is taken right after workout. Infact, A study in 2018, published by associate professor of exercise science at Lehman College, Brad Schoenfeld, along with his research team, explored this concept of the anabolic window and whether it does indeed exist. Schoenfeld has concluded that there is no difference between consuming protein before or after exercise when the amount of protein was matched between groups. At the end of the day, the total amount of protein you consume in a day is the most important component to increase exercise-induced muscle development.

Another study by Darren G. Candow, Philip D. Chilibeck, Gordon A. Zello published at the European Journal of Applied Physiology found that consuming 0.3g/kg (0.14 g/lb) before or after resistance training produced similar increases in 1RM leg press and bench press strength over a 12-week training program.

An additional study by Schoenfeld, Aragon, and their fellow researchers on Pre- versus post-exercise protein intake in 2017 found that protein intake before a workout and after the workout has similar effects on muscular adaptations until the total daily protein intake is maintained.

The concept of an anabolic window was unfounded — there was no difference in body composition between the group that took protein after the workout and the one that didn’t. In practical terms, this means you can probably relax a little about downing a protein shake immediately after your workout. What is undisputed however is the need to keep daily protein levels up and this is best done by consuming quality protein during the day in the form of real food and supplements if required.

 

WHAT IS STRENGTH THEN?

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To put it simply, strength is the ability of the neuromuscular system to produce internal tension to overcome an external load. Mechanoreceptors are sensitive to mechanical stimuli in the environment. A process known as mechanotransduction converts these mechanical signals to electrical signals and activates a cascade of cellular signaling pathways which help in protein biosynthesis.

HOW TO TRAIN FOR STRENGTH?

Strength training is nothing but training for Myofibrillar Hypertrophy, which is an increase in myosin and actin (muscular contractile proteins), which increases the strength of the muscle without adding size to the muscle.

With strength training, the key components to increasing myofibrillar hypertrophy with weight lifting are low volume on repetitions, an increasing weight load – known as progressive overload, and long rest periods. When we say long rest periods, we are talking about a period of 3-5 minutes, which is long enough for your body to recover from the exercise set you just completed. In essence, the muscle is damaged during the exercise set itself, and the extended rest periods in between sets allow for the muscle to overcompensate in its repair efforts, making fibers stronger, but not necessarily larger. The number of sets for strength is typically lesser than that of hypertrophy, about 15-20 sets for a trained person with good recovery capabilities. For muscular strength, you reduce the number of reps in a set (exercise volume) while increasing the intensity (adding heavier weights).

Neural Adaptations and Strength Training

The neural adaptations athletes undergo in training refers to the brain’s ability to recruit muscles to contract and produce a particular movement. Strength training helps athletes develop muscle memory so that they can quickly access their movement patterns during the performance. The neuromuscular system goes through this cycle when developing strength: teach the brain to fire correct muscles to contract with a new movement, add resistance, recruit more muscle fibers to oppose the resistance, build strength and adapt to the resistance, increase the complexity or resistance, and repeat.

CONCLUSION

Now that you know how your role models achieved their remarkable physiques, what are you waiting for? Go build some incredible physiques, all you require is some dedication, hard work, and consistency supported by a good workout and nutrition plan.

REFRENCES

1)https://blog.nasm.org/fitness/fast-twitch-vs-slow-twitch

2)https://themusclephd.com/what-causes-growth/

3)BRAD SHOENFIELD -SCIENCE AND DEVELOPMENT OF MUSCLE HYPERTROPHHY BOOK 2ND EDITION

4)https://themusclephd.com/what-causes-growth/

5)https://blog.bridgeathletic.com/neural-adaptations-and-strength-training%3Fhs_amp%3Dtrue

6) https://blackstonelabs.com/blogs/weekly-blog/training-for-size-vs-strength

  1. Sampson JA, Groeller H. Is repetition failure critical for the development of muscle hypertrophy and strength?. Scandinavian journal of medicine & science in sports. 2016 Apr;26(4):375-83.

  2. Pareja-Blanco F, Rodríguez-Rosell D, Sánchez-Medina L, Sanchis-Moysi J, Dorado C, Mora-Custodio R, Yáñez-García JM, Morales-Alamo D, Pérez-Suárez I, Calbet JA, González-Badillo JJ. Effects of velocity loss during resistance training on athletic performance, strength gains and muscle adaptations. Scandinavian journal of medicine & science in sports. 2017 Jul;27(7):724-35.

9).Carroll KM, Bazyler CD, Bernards JR, Taber CB, Stuart CA, DeWeese BH, Sato K, Stone MH. Skeletal muscle fiber adaptations following resistance training using repetition maximums or relative intensity. Sports. 2019 Jul;7(7):169.

  1. Lacerda LT, Marra-Lopes RO, Diniz RC, Lima FV, Rodrigues SA, Martins-Costa HC, Bemben MG, Chagas MH. Is Performing Repetitions to Failure Less Important Than Volume for Muscle Hypertrophy and Strength?. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research. 2020 May 1;34(5):1237-48.

  2. Santanielo N, Nóbrega S, Scarpelli M, Alvarez I, Otoboni G, Pintanel L, Libardi C. Effect of resistance training to muscle failure vs non-failure on strength, hypertrophy and muscle architecture in trained individuals. Biology of Sport. 2020;37(1).

12). https://homegymlife.com/the-post-workout-anabolic-window/

13). Schoenfeld, B. J., & Aragon, A. A. (2018b). Is There a Postworkout Anabolic Window of Opportunity for Nutrient Consumption? Clearing up Controversies. Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy, 48(12), 911–914. https://doi.org/10.2519/jospt.2018.06

14). Candow, D. G., Chilibeck, P. D., Facci, M., Abeysekara, S., & Zello, G. A. (2006). Protein supplementation before and after resistance training in older men. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 97(5), 548–556. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-006-0223-8

15).  Schoenfeld, B. J., Aragon, A., Wilborn, C., Urbina, S. L., Hayward, S. E., & Krieger, J. (2017). Pre- versus post-exercise protein intake has similar effects on muscular adaptations. PeerJ, 5, e2825. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2825

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