S.O.S. - Strength or Size?

Written by E.J. Reeves

To build a better body, a person needs to train with purpose. Goals and objectives must be identified for our training. One of the basic questions we must ask ourselves if whether we are training for muscle strength or muscle size. If you have never even considered this question, but rather opted for the health club line of “toning up” then you will fail in your attempts at building a better body. Let me repeat that again, without separate and specific training protocols for increasing muscle strength and then increasing muscle size, you are wasting your workout time!

I have seen dedicated health club members go year after year with consistent effort with NO improvement. Let us get real about building a better body. Take the analogy of home construction. First, a foundation is laid of basic heavy concrete. Next, carpenters add a frame with lots of lumber and plywood on that foundation. At that point, if a person were to drive by the construction site he would see a solid building, not finished of course but he would see significant observable results. Do you not want the same significant observable results from your workouts?

So, let’s get back to my question of strength or size. To help you answer this you should know the following:

A. You will only gain a certain amount of muscle size with a muscle size building routine before you need to train for strength.

B. You will increase a certain amount of strength with a strength routine before you need to train for size.

Back to our home analogy, the heavy concrete foundation is strength and built on that is our frame of size. To put it in relation to time, train 1 month for strength and 2 months for size then back again.

Characteristics of a Strength Routine:

- few heavy compound movements

- 2-3 minutes rest between sets

- 3-5 rep range

- repeat same workouts 2 times a week

- 6 workouts per week – 30 minutes long

Characteristics of a Size Routine:

- several medium weight compound and isolation movements

- 30-60 seconds between sets with some super sets (sets performed back to back with no rest)

- 8-12 rep range

- perform same workout once a week

- 6 workouts per week

- 45 minutes long

The focus of the strength routine is a few heavy quality moves, whereas the focus of the size routine is 50% more lifts of a medium weight.

Here is my personal strength routine:

Monday & Thursday - Dead lifts & shrugs

After a warm-up I proceed to dead lifts, rest, shrugs, rest, dead lifts. Repeat the cycle as often as possible in 30 minutes. Lift as heavy as possible for 5 reps a set. Recording my weight and increasing it every Monday (starting the second week)

After two workouts you will know the number of sets you can perform in the 30 minute timeframe.

Tuesday & Friday - Wide grip chin-ups with weight & standing military presses

After a warm-up, I proceed to wide grip chin-ups with weights, rest, standing military presses, rest, wide grip chin-ups. Repeat the cycle as often as possible in 30 minutes. Lift as heavy as possible for 5 reps a set. Recording my weight and increasing it every Friday (starting the second week)

Wednesday & Saturday - Incline bench dumbbell presses* & parallel bar dips with weight vest

Follow the same procedure as the above two workouts (presses, rest, dips, rest, etc) Weight is increased every Wednesday (starting the second week)

* Occasionally I substitute this exercise with pushups with weight vest and my feet elevated on a box.

Note: The above routine is basic, heavy and hard. You will not see health club soft bodies doing any of the above exercises with heavy weights in the 5 rep range. You will notice after a couple of heavy sets your rest periods will become longer. That is OK as long as you do not exceed 3 minutes in the later part of your 30 minute routine. You increase the weight Monday, Wednesday and Friday as long as you keep the same reps and sets per session. After four weeks you should be significantly stronger on any exercise that you may do in the size routine. This strength routine, except for your calves, works the entire body. Your grip, forearms and even your abs will be worked. Try this for a month for some serious total body strengthening. Next month I will feature my size routine in Part II of S.O.S.

Feedback

Hi E.J.,

A few questions for you. I purchased your beam mounted chin up bar and door frame dip bar about a year and a half or two years ago. And have increased reps in both by quite a bit in that time. The most recent workout I was doing was the "Recon Ron" progression workout. Not sure if you heard about it. Basically you do the workout M through Friday but you are not going to failure at all so it is definitely possible to do 5 days a week. The first progression I did about two and a half months ago was something like 8-6-4-4-4 and my max at the time was about 12 reps. The last progression I have done is 13-9-8-8-8 and my max is now 16 reps continuous. The rest period between sets is two minutes. I am starting to feel a little stale doing this workout so I am going to try the workout you have in FF-mag where you do strength then size then endurance.

My questions are:

Hi Rich,

I am really glad you enjoy our products and that you are using them consistently. In addition to that you want to know my opinion which is really flattering.

Lets start in reverse order of your questions. Understanding why people go to failure and why not is important. In general terms going to failure maximizes your training effect but you need maximum recuperation power. Since your body only has so much to give going to failure routines usually only last 4 to 6 weeks before you are completely burnt out. On the other hand not going to failure allows you to focus on a single aspect of your workout like volume, or weight for a consistent time period. It looks like Ron's Recon focusing on volume and Pavel focuses on strength/weight. The down side of not going to failure is that while strength and volume may go up, muscle growth is rather limited.

The general solution is to pick a philosophy that falls in the middle. What that means is that you consistently come very close to failure on every set. That means you stop one or two reps before failure. To be able to do this in the rep range you have decided you need to decrease the weight every few sets or the difficulty of the exercise. An example in pull-ups would be medium grip pull-ups with twenty five pounds at your target reps for four sets, then four sets of wide grip, then four sets of medium grip, then four sets of palms facing you shoulder grip, then four sets of palms facing you narrow grip hands touching.

That is a progression of five different exercises going from hardest to easiest. When performed this way each exercise will allow you to come close to failure in your rep range because of the fatigue factor. As I stated in my articles the five rep range builds strength while the eight rep range builds some muscle size. In overview my philosophy falls between the two other workouts you mentioned. Hope this helps. Keep working out. Keep a journal to see what works for you.

-E.J.

You can e-mail E.J. your questions or comments at info@easyeffort.com

Copyright © 2002 by E.J. Reeves All rights reserved.

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