There is a movement in fitness industry that believes that you have to get strong to maximize muscle growth if you’re a natural lifter.
This statement isn’t necessarily completely wrong but it’s not accurate enough.
There is distinct difference between training purely for muscle growth and training purely for muscle building. The key word here is “purely” or “exclusively” training for one thing or another. They are in some ways correlated but not completely.
Yes you will gain some muscle when you train for strength and yes, you will gain some strength when you train purely for muscle growth. Especially if you’re a beginner.
But the fact is that there is no 1:1 correlation between strength and muscle size. Being able to lift more weight on any lift doesn’t mean that you’re building muscle.
I know a lot of people think this is true, especially if you’re natural, but it just isn’t.
If that were true the strongest guys would exclusively be the biggest guys which we all know is definitively not the case.
We have all seen super strong guys who look like stick figures, and we have all seen pretty big guys that are not really that strong.
I can already hear some of you saying “yea but if you’re natural you need… etc.” and the answer is no.
It doesn’t matter if you’re natural or not, strength specific training is always specific to strength, and muscle building training is always specific to building muscle.
Just take a look at some of the elite untested (untested means they’re using drugs) powerlifters vs pro bodybuilders on olympia stage (and bodybuilders in their offseason).
While there are a few impressive looking powerlifters, even bigger powerlifters don’t even compare to lower tier pro bodybuilders when it comes to muscle mass.
Some people claim that for naturals powerlifting is actually better for muscle growth than the training that is specifically designed for muscle building – hypertrophy.
Of course there are some similarities (sometimes) between hypertrophy training and strength training, and it’s not like if you’re training for strength that you’re not gonna build any muscle.
That’s almost like saying that riding a bicycle is the best training for quad size just because you’re doing thousands of reps for your quads every day.
Yes, you are training your quads, but you’re not training them optimally for muscle growth.
Powerlifting vs hypertrophy training is the same thing as the bicycle example, just in the opposite direction because powerlifting is high intensity training with heavy loads, and riding a bicycle is literally very low intensity training and super high volume training.
Strength training DOES build muscle!
Before we answer the question if strength training is good for building muscle we need to dig a little bit deeper than that because it’s not a straight forward answer
But if you want a short answer, the answer is yes and… no.
- Can you build muscle with strength training? Of course.
- Is strength training optimal for muscle building? Of course not.
- Strength training is optimal for strength training, not for muscle building.
- Muscle building/hypertrophy training is optimal for muscle building and strength training is optimal for strength training.
Training for strength and training for muscle size are two different goals which require different training modalities and training style.
The two are not the same and now we’re going to cover in what ways are they different.
The difference in exercise selection between strength training and hypertrophy training
When we discuss exercise selection, we need to put things into context because we have two distinctly different goals here.
When we train for strength we need to ask this question: do we want to be stronger in the bicep curl or do we want to build strength in the squat specifically?
You see, most people automatically assume that when we talk about strength that we talk about the squat, bench and deadlift.
In their eyes, the word “strength” means strength specifically in the squat, bench and deadlift or some other lift which is generally associated to strength like overhead press, clean and jerk or snatch. Which is ok, and for the sake of argument, we are going to continue in this context.
Just remember, you can build strength (get stronger) in any lift possible, not just the squat, bench and deadlift.
Some lifts are not practical for testing 1RM, or lifting heavy weights like lateral raises or concentration curls but yes, your goal can be to lift as much weight as possible in concentration curl, which is a weird goal but then again, isn’t that something similar what arm wrestlers do every day and specifically train for it with weights?
The main point here is that strength doesn’t necessarily mean how much you can bench, squat or deadlift.
This lifts are really good measuring tools for overall strength, but they’re not the only ones.
Strongman athletes don’t bench right? They measure their strength in various ways, not just by doing one max repetition lift.
They carry stuff for time, they throw stuff for time, they do repetitions with specific weight for time, for reps etc.
To sum up, strength can be measured in various of ways, and that statement is important for us because we do need to build “strength” in a SPECIFIC WAY to build muscle.
Soon, we’re going to find out in what way precisely.
The Difference Between General Strength Training and Powerlifting
Just because people still associate word strength with specific movements or sports like weightlifting, powerlifting and strongman, we’re casually going to see what formal definition of strength is and try to define the strength in our own context.
The first definition that google gave us was this:
“Strength is the quality or state of being physically strong.”
Which doesn’t really help us here because it’s too general and not at all specific.
We need something more applicable to our situation so I’m just gonna give my own definition here:
“Strength is the ability to move or lift as much weight as possible in a certain plane or motion for a specific number of reps or time.”
This definition pretty much applies to any kind of lift in strength sports.
Do NOT get too hung up on this definition. The purpose here is to realize that strength doesn’t only mean how much can you bench or squat, but rather the fact that you can chase strength in ANY movement.
That’s our main point and we need to put it in the most simple terms.
In strength training, your goal is basically to lift as much weight as possible for a certain amount of reps in a certain lift that is considered as “strength movement” like the squat.
In hypertrophy training you want to do something similar but you want to do it with exercises that provide the most stress to the muscles and with number of repetitions that will provide the most stimulus for muscle growth. – Key point!
Which varies a lot!
Most studies have shown that doing anywhere from 6 – 30 reps is just fine, and I would add to that that on single joint exercises you never go bellow 10 reps because it’s just not practical.
Just imagine doing one rep max on lateral raises. It doesn’t make any sense and it’s dangerous.
The GOAL in Powerlifting is not to build muscle!
Now that we have actually put some things into perspective let’s talk about the first thing where training for powerlifting specifically differs from training for general strength, and after that we’re going to cover, how powerlifting training differs from hypertrophy or bodybuilding training.
Your goal in powerlifting is to lift as much weight as possible for one repetition in the squat, bench and deadlift in the ACTUAL COMPETITION.
Powerlifting is literally a competition that is set on a certain date in which you have 3 attempts to lift as much weight as possible for 1 repetition in the squat, bench and deadlift.
You can’t just lift whenever you want however you like.
Powerlifting has strict rules of how you should perform your lifts.
Powerlifting has a very specific goal and that goal is going to dictate how you train.
Everything in your training needs to be oriented toward the goal of lifting max weight for one repetition in the actual competition and nothing else matters.
However, when you train for general strength, you don’t need to necessarily train specifically to maximize your strength in squat, bench and deadlift for specifically one repetition on a specific day/date.
You’re not limited to just those three exercises.
You can have a goal of building strength in overhead press for 3 reps. You can have a goal of lifting max reps with 100kg in log press. That’s also a strength goal.
You can have a goal of lifting max weight for one repetition on, dare I say, the leg press?
Well, having a goal of lifting max weight on leg press isn’t a cool goal and if you tell that to somebody you’re probably going to get laughed at. (because it doesn’t make any sense to do that in the first place and it’s actually dangerous)
But no matter if it’s cool or not, it IS a strength training goal.
(please, do not try to lift one rep max on leg press I beg you)
In what ways are strength training and hypertrophy correlated?
It is known that muscle mass is strongly correlated with strength but you have to have in mind that it’s not a 1:1 correlation. One of the reasons why that is so is because “type 2a” muscle fibers or so called “fast twitch” muscle fibers have better potential for muscle growth than slow twitch muscle fibers. Fast twitch muscle fibers are the “strength muscle fibers” and they can produce very large amounts of force in short bursts.
In addition to having more fast twitch muscle fibers people who are genetically gifted for muscle mass are usually also prone to have thicker bones, stronger tendons and better leverages to move more weight.
As you can already see, muscle mass alone is not the only cause of strength, and strength is most likely NOT the cause of muscle hypertrophy.
Scientists are speculating that the actual cause of muscle growth is mechanical tension + metabolic stress and stretching under load (these are still speculative).
There are many other reasons why some individual can be strong (or big) but we’re going to focus on the two reasons that concerns us in our context which are muscle size and leverages.
When your muscles are bigger you create better leverages in many ways to maximize your strength in powerlifting.
The most obvious and the most simple one is on the bench. If you have bigger back and bigger chest you’re gonna decrease the range of motion in which the bar needs to travel which will help you lift more weight.
The next reason why having bigger muscles will help you lift more weight is because you literally have more contractile tissue to move the weight. Just think of having a bigger engine in your car… of course the car will be faster if it has bigger and stronger engine.
When you train specifically for strength you’re training specifically contractile tissue that is moving the weight, you’re not just increasing glycogen stores which is also known as sarcoplasmic hypertrophy which probably occurs a bit more when you’re training like a bodybuilder. (the research on sarcomplasmic vs myofibrilar hypertrophy is not completely clear at this moment but it does indicate that you may train these two separately)
I guess you already heard the term “mass moves mass” and that statement is true. If you find two TOP elite level lifters the heavier weight class is always stronger.
The example for us taller lifters here is if we took 2 guys that both weigh 90kg/198lbs, and one of them is 191cm/6 foot 3 inch tall and the other guy is 175cm/5 foot 9 inch tall.
If these two individuals weight the same, have the same amount of bodyfat, and they both train specifically for strength, the short guy is going to outlift the taller guy because he literally has more muscle mass per centimeter or inch of height.
Other examples of “mass moves mass” is any other sport that has weight categories like powerlifting, weightlifting, MMA, wrestling, boxing, armwrestling etc.
If they’re both at the elite level, the heavier guy is always going to beat the lighter guy. No matter the sport. That’s the reason why we have weight divisions. So that bigger guys don’t kill the smaller guys.
That is the reason why it is in the interest of the powerlifter to focus on building specifically muscle size. To have the most muscle possible while staying in the preferred weight class.
Since training purely for muscle size isn’t optimal for strength training, powerlifters focus a bit more on muscle building in their off season in which they usually do volume blocks.
These blocks of training are usually specifically designed to increase muscle size while trying to keep the strength if the lifter didn’t still “filled out” his class potential.
Very advanced powerlifters who are at the peak of their career don’t have to focus on muscle building anymore because they are already at the genetic limit of their muscle growth so they have much shorter periods of time when they focus on building muscle and those periods doesn’t even have to be super specific to muscle building. Just enough volume so that they don’t actually start losing muscle.
Most of their time is spent perfecting their own technique and neural efficiency which is different than training for muscle size.
Programming Difference Between Powerlifting and Mass building
Now that we actually know that there is a difference between training for strength and training for size let’s cover a little bit about how powerlifters may train to see things more clearly why some people may think that powerlifting is good for muscle building and why some powerlifters look jacked.
This is going to be a simple set up for powerlifting training. Please don’t start doing this training because this is going to be a simplest and the most basic example possible for the argument sake only.
Powerlifting training can be divided into 3 separate training blocks which are:
- Hypertrophy or “volume” block
- Strength block
- Peaking block
The length of these blocks is going to depend on the level of advancement of the athlete.
For example a beginner powerlifter will spend more time on muscle building than the elite powerlifter and elite powerlifter will most likely spend more time on peaking.
Our imaginary athlete is going to spend 1.5 months of hypertrophy training, 2 months of strength training and one month of peaking so it is going to look like this.
The first 1.5 months for squat hypertrophy may look something like this:
(these are total weekly sets executed in multiple days)
Week 1-2 = 5×8@70%
Week 2-4 = 6×8@70-72.5%
Week 4-6 = 6×6-8@72.5-75%
The next two months for strength training may look like this:
(these are total weekly sets executed in multiple days)
Week 7-8 = 8×6@75%
Week 9-10 = 10×5@75%
Week 11-12 = 12×5-6@77.5%
Week 13-14 = 12×4-6@75-80%
The last month of peaking may look something like this:
Week 15-16 = 8×1-4@80-85%
Week 17-18 = 6×1-3@85-90%
The reason why I went over a whole powerlifting training cycle is to show you that powerlifters usually have separate times when they focus on hypertrophy training and strength training.
The point here is that they’re not the same thing.
When they focus on hypertrophy training they do different things then when they focus on peaking or strength training.
There is a difference between training for muscle mass and training for hyper specific goal such as maximizing 1RM (which is essentially powerlifting).
You can get stronger without needing to maximize your 1RM specifically.
However, it is in powerlifters interest to be as big as possible.
They know that more muscle mass is going to help them move more weight no matter the weight class.
Since moving the most weight possible for one rep in squat bench and deadlift is literally their goal, they do hypertrophy work because it helps them do that.
Powerlifters are not big because they’re strong or because they train like powerlifters but rather they work on getting bigger to be even stronger and more competitive as a powerlifter.
That’s the difference.
Training Specifically For Muscle Mass vs Powerlifting
We have talked that strength isn’t just how much weight you lift for absolute maximum effort one time (one rep), but strength can mean many things.
Just look at strongman competition for example. Most of their events are measured with time and/or reps.
Do you dare to say that strongman are not strong?
Ok so training for muscle mass….
When our goal is to train for muscle mass, we’re not limited to just 3 movements like squat bench and deadlift.
Of course, powerlifters are not training only squat, bench and deadlift but they always do some variation of flat benching, some variation of back squatting and some variation of deadlifting,.
They need to do that because they compete in those lifts. Especially in peaking block when they almost exclusively do only the big 3.
In muscle building, exercise selection is a bit different. Yes of course, squat is a phenomenal exercise for quads, bench is also one of the best exercise for chest but I have to draw the line with deadlifts.
Deadlift simply isn’t the greatest exercise for your back development. I don’t care how emotionally attached are you to the deadlift.
You’re hearing this from a guy who’s best lift is actually deadlift. My best numbers on deadlift are 1x270kg(595lbs), 6x250kg(551lbs), 10x220kg(485lbs).
For muscle building, your goal is to find exercises that target specifically your muscles through as much range of motion as possible in a most safest way possible.
You don’t want to rip your chest by doing chest flyes all the way behind your back, and you don’t want to go so deep in the squat so that you train more your bones than your muscles.
For example, Incline bench is probably a better choice for your chest than flat bench.
Why?
Is it because incline bench has some magical powers for muscle building in comparison to flat bench.
Of course not, it’s just that on incline bench your chest need to work through more range of motion than on flat bench.
Do you absolutely need to do incline bench?
Of course not.
Does that mean that you can’t fully develop you chest on flat bench?
Also no.
There are people who can train their chest through full range of motion on flat bench. Usually people with longer arms.
So having that in mind;
is deadlift the best way to train any of your back muscles through the most range of motion?
no…
Is deadlift targeting specifically any of your back muscles through full range of motion?
Not really.
On top of that doing deadlifts is super taxing on your body and you may progress in muscle mass even better if you ditch heavy deadlifts completely because then your body will recover better in general.
Deadlifts are not only not neccessary for muscle building, but maybe even harmful.
When you’re training for muscle mass you’re not limited with any exercise.
To Sum Things Up
Will you build muscle if you train like powerlifter?
Yes you will build some muscle…
Is powerlifting optimal for muscle growth?
Absolutely not.
Will you maximize your muscle building genetic potential with powerlifting?
Absolutely not.
Is powerlifting better for muscle building than hypertrophy specific training?
Absolutely not.
Hypertrophy specific training is superior for muscle building than powerlifting or general strength training.
Powerlifting has become so popular in last few years that I completely understand when some people think that powerlifting is the be all for everything and that you should definitively train like powerlifter.
But I honestly believe that a lot of people are training like a powerlifter just because they think that powerlifting (or general strength training) is somehow superior for muscle building that the actual hypertrophy specific training, which is of course nonsense.
The way you design a training program is by having a goal and then design a program that will lead you to the desired goal, whether it be more strength, more muscle mass or weight loss.
Strength and muscle mass are closely related so it’s understandable that some people who doesn’t completely understand exercise science (and training with weights in general) sometimes get confused with all these half truths and mixed information in regards to training.
We didn’t even cover how nutrition can affect your strength and your muscle mass because this article covers only the major differences between powerlifting and muscle mass training.
So in short no, powerlifting is not optimal for muscle building.
You can check out my free training program which is 30 pages long and there you can see a little bit how you can design a program that kinda covers strength and hypertrophy.
