3 Tips to Build Strength and Muscle in One Programme
Many of my clients want to build strength and muscle at the same time. Strength training has grown in popularity for its wide range of benefits, but for many people this still doesn’t trump the appeal of changing their physique as well. It helps that building additional muscle tissue is also beneficial for everyone.
It helps that getting stronger and building muscle can be complimentary processes. This means that the two goals do not clash with each other as much as, say, getting stronger and losing weight.
That being said, gaining strength and muscle are not exactly the same process, as I have detailed with some analogies in the past. This means there is some potential for these training goals to clash if a programme isn’t balanced properly. Some common faults are:
- Too much hypertrophy work, which can lead to fatigue that hampers strength performance.
- An overemphasis on strength work with long rest periods can take a lot of training time, leaving less time to work on volume.
- Treating strength and muscle building training as completely separate blocks, which leads to too much time away from either adaptation.
Training to build strength and muscle at the same time is a delicate balance, and these tips will help you get it just right.