Strength Training Vs Bodybuilding
I’ve been exposed to weight training since I was about 14 years old, when my older brother bought a bench, a barbell, a set of dumbbells and some weights, which we proceeded to take over our dad’s garage and turn that into our gym. We trained pretty much every afternoon after school for about two years until he went off to university.
During this time, I most definitely increased my muscle mass (though some of that must have been natural adolescent growth) and increased in strength. I continued to train with weights until I myself went off to university, but despite having trained on and off for over three years, I never ever looked, or was even in danger, of looking like a bodybuilder.
I’ve since been training for the last six months, very consistently, keeping a diary of my training sessions, in which I can see progress each session, but when I look in the mirror, I don’t think I look that much bigger than I did when I first started – although I do look leaner and more athletic!
This has got me to thinking that my way of training and my physique is more suited to strength training and not bodybuilding. I would love to put muscle on easily, but even when I was eating like a bodybuilder – 4,000 calories a day and nearly 300 grams of protein – all I really achieved to do was get fatter! This of course was not my intended outcome, and as such I have since stopped eating that way, but I am still gaining in strength, and increasing my lifts.
The conclusion that I have come to is that to increase in size, for me anyway, I would have to accept a significant increase in fat levels along with muscle gains. I’m not prepared to accept this, so I’ve instead opted to train specifically for strength, and not muscle size gains.
For strength training you can train three times a week, as you will be mostly increasing the neuromuscular strength and not the muscle strength. My intention will be to do a full body workout, three times a week, doing less sets on each body part than I would do normally, and mainly incorporating compound barbell or bodyweight exercises, such as squats, bench press, chin ups or pull ups and shoulder press.
There are some distinct advantages to training like this that I can see – firstly, by performing a full body workout I should boost my metabolism far more than doing one body part per workout, but secondly, if this regime turns out to work well for me, I could cancel my gym membership and simply invest in some equipment to build a home gym. All I would need is a power rack, a barbell set and a chin-up bar.
5 Responses to “Strength Training Vs Bodybuilding”
June 1st, 2009 saat: 9:47 am
I’d like to hear more about this as this seems to be a radical departure for you. Would training heavy three times a week for each bodypart not be overtraining? Or is the theory that 2-3 heavy sets only would mean 48 hours recovery is sufficient?
I do believe people are very different and that’s we need to experiment with varying techniques to see what works best for us. I’m surprised you haven’t seen more results given how dedicated you’ve been over the last few months. It’s a frustrating game but keep going and you’ll find your niche.
June 1st, 2009 saat: 12:41 pm
I think I just got fed up with seeing gains on paper - in my workout journal but not really seeing much improvement in my physique, so what I want to do now is focus more on burning off the fat and keeping the muscle size and tone I have already. I should be able to trim down in 4-6 weeks to a reasonable level, see how I feel then.
June 2nd, 2009 saat: 4:25 pm
Diet and exercise is definitely a trial-and-error thing. Everyone has a different body that reacts differently to foods, fats, weights, cardio, etc. I’ve definitely been frustrated with fitness “plateaus” and not getting the results I thought I would from a certain approach to my eating habits and workouts. It’s all a learning experience I guess.
I actually have done the “full body weight training workout, 3 days a week” before, mixing some cardio on my off days (including interval training!). That works well for keeping me at a good level of fitness, but I’ve found more recently that if I want more significant gains in muscle mass and tone, I have to focus on certain muscle groups each day and work those out more intensely than I would have the mental capacity and time to do if I were doing a full body workout.
I still put my cardio in and watch my diet. I’m at a point where I’m going to the gym twice a day, although my total gym time is probably only 1.5-2 hours at most each day (and since one of my training sessions is with 2-3 other friends, it’s a bit “social” and less efficient of a workout). The results have been encouraging; I’ve gotten some great compliments since switching to this approach a few weeks ago.
I’ll be interested to see how your new method works out, Tristan!
June 3rd, 2009 saat: 8:40 am
Going to the gym twice a day - how on earth do you find time to do any work? In fairness, I often go to the gym in the morning before I start work, then go for a run or do some interval training after I finish work, having two showers a day is a bit tiresome!
February 1st, 2010 saat: 8:21 pm
Hello.
After spending allot of my time i came to the same conclusion as you mention here. I incorporated more heavy lifts and bodyweight exercises. I only did it for about a month and got complimented allot on how my arms and my whole body looked bigger. Not only that but in judo classes i felt my balance improved considerably and best of all I stayed at roughly the same weight!
Now i’m looking to inroduce more cardio to my routine.
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