Reading Time: 8 minutes
You can’t effectively train to optimize all three goals of strength, hypertrophy (muscle growth) and fat loss!
As a recap, building muscle (hypertrophy) and increasing muscular strength are considerably different.
Muscle mass is essentially the amount and size of muscle fibers that you have, which makes up a cross sectional area.
Muscular strength is the ability to recruit those muscle fibers.
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Reading Time: 11 minutes
First off, as with anything, it depends what your goal is.
For the purpose of this article, I’m going to dive into the considerations,
assuming muscle growth (hypertrophy) is the main intent of training.
*As a side note, if your goals are maximal strength or general health, training frequency doesn’t really matter as much.
Training Frequency
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Reading Time: 12 minutes
What is your goal?
As with anything, your goal should be the driving factor that guides you to move forward. When it comes to exercise, there are a few potential motives including general health/longevity, improved body composition, or even as a method to reduce stress or increase productivity. There is typically a lot of overlap from one goal to another, but sometimes pursuing one can be detrimental towards achieving another.
For example, if building muscle and/or losing fat is your primary goal, and you take it to the extreme, you can actually worsen your health and lifespan. Depriving your body of calories to reach and sustain a low body fat percentage can provide deteriorating stress to your body by challenging its natural limitations.
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