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.
Split Strength and Hypertrophy Training for each Muscle Group
It may seem logical to do all the work for one muscle group on the same day. For example, you may wish to perform bench press for strength and then move on to a push day for hypertrophy. However, this dumps all of your volume into one session. This inevitably leads to poorer performance in later exercises due to the accumulated fatigue, causing a lower hypertrophy stimulus.
Instead, consider dividing your volume throughout your sessions. Here is an example of how that might work:
| Session 1 | Session 2 | Session 3 | Session 4 |
| Push strength | Squat strength | Pull strength | Deadlift strength |
| Pull hypertrophy | Posterior chain hypertrophy | Push hypertrophy | Knee-dominant hypertrophy |
Not only does this spread your volume throughout the week, but it also gives you less downtime between each workout on the target area. The benefit of this is a more consistent stimulus for building strength and muscle.
There are two potential downsides to this:
- Requires workouts to be spread across more training days.
- More frequent loading of areas that may be susceptible to fatigue, such as grip.
If you take longer to recover or don’t have many training days, you may wish to ignore this advice and do your strength and hypertrophy training for a given area on the same day.
Do High-Volume Compound Lifts to Build Strength and Muscle
We commonly think of strength and hypertrophy adaptation as taking place at entirely different rep ranges. While it’s true that compound strength exercises may not be the best for dedicated hypertrophy training, they can be used as a good compromise if you have limited time or are really dedicated to your strength training.
Contrary to popular belief, there is no magical rep range for building muscle. What’s more important is the number of sets that are taken close to failure per week. Hypertrophy has been demonstrated after sets ranging from 5 reps to 30 reps. This is why high-set, low-rep training schemes such as 5×5 are often billed as the perfect crossroads between building strength and building muscle.
However, this is definitely a compromise. Performing a high number of sets at a high relative intensity can be very demanding, and could even be risky in the long-term. It can also be hard to target weaker or under-utilised muscle groups if the majority of your training is focused around the big lifts.
Look for the Gaps in Your Training
If a large bulk of your strength training is focused on big lifts, then your muscle building exercises should aim to target joint positions and ranges that the big lifts don’t. For example, if the barbell bench press is your pushing strength exercise, then your hypertrophy work might focus on something that delivers a bigger loaded stretch – for example, a cable or dumbbell flye. You might also wish to target other fibres of the pectoral muscles, by using an incline.
If you’re a wide-stance squatter like me, then you might choose lower body accessories to target a more neutral hip position and a deeper range at the knee. An example of this might be a leg press or sissy squats.
Conclusion
Training for two goals at once, such as strength and muscle growth, is always a risky proposition. You risk diluting your efforts on two competing adaptations, and getting half the results for the work you’re putting in. However, building strength and muscle at the same time is achievable provided you’re strategic about how you allocate your resources. If you want additional advice with this, I offer a free 30-minute training consultation to help you get the most from your efforts. You can get in touch below!
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