Strength and hypertrophy are often lumped together in conversations around training. That’s because there is heavy carryover between methods used to attain both of these results. BUT there are fine differences and that’s what today’s episode will cover. If hypertrophy - aka muscle growth - is your main goal in comparison to strength, or strength is your priority, today’s monologue should be helpful. And I’m stoked to cover this one with you.

My programming is a mix of strength and hypertrophy but I am personally in a hypertrophy specific training phase and will be for the foreseeable future. Strength training - true strength training requires a high mental load in my opinion. There is no going through the motions. It can be a lot - a lot of time, a lot of brain space, and a lot on the joints. It’s simply not what makes the most sense for my current postpartum season. While I am pushing strength in some of the movements in the program I am following, most of my focus is hypertrophy. So, you should be able to identify through this episode what I am personally practicing in my training.

We’re going over six aspects of training and the differences in their application to training based on hypertrophy vs strength

Let us begin.

RPE

* Higher RPE with strength training generally speaking.

* Hypertrophy can happen on a much wider spectrum of RPE than strength.

These differences come down to load in relationship to volume. While hypertrophy can certainly be a byproduct of absolute strength training, strength will likely be lower volume (sets and reps) and with higher loads, therefore higher RPE.

Warm up sets vs Pre-fatigue

* Warm up sets are a must for strength training.

* Pre-fatigue is more applicable to hypertrophy training. 

Warm up sets for strength training or select exercises in hypertrophy training ensure that you prime the body for the proper load for ALL working sets. Meaning we don’t leave anything on the table - wasting working sets with loads that are not challenging enough. 

Pre-fatigue is used to pre-fatigue the muscle groups you’re focusing on that day in a more hypertrophy based program. If doing lower body with a knee and quad dominant bias, then maybe some light hero squats or quad extensions might be used before the main lift begins.

Warm up sets may or may not be needed. But are definitely suggested and needed for strength training.

Rest periods

Training absolute strength requires longer rest periods in order to demonstrate repeat strength and get the most force out of your muscle fibers.

As mentioned earlier, hypertrophy can be trained across a large spectrum of volume and load - therefore rest periods. You could see NO REST all the way up to 120 seconds depending on the set and program prescription. I can see reason for both. Either way, actually scheduling and following rest is a great way to be sure you’re working hard enough during working sets. You should NEED the rest in order to complete programmed sets and loads.

Tempo

I do not have research to back this but should truly find some because tempo is all the rage right now and it’s funny because I have been talking about it as serious missing piece in programming for years.

It will not magically fix programming or get you gains but it’s important nonetheless.

For strength, following a controlled tempo is going to be beneficial for training the SKILL...