The first thing to clarify is that there is a significant difference between strength and hypertrophy….

I could see from their face though that this was not going to be feasible.  With a family, work and planned races for the middle of 2022 a focal part of his life, asking them to fit in another schedule was going to be hard.

But this may be due to the fact that most of us think that in order to train and get stronger then we almost have to live in the gym and eat and drink protein all day!  Well todays post is to inform you of the facts.

The first thing to clarify is that there is a significant difference between strength and hypertrophy. Notice how the whole of this post so far has only mentioned the words strength and stronger.  There has been no mention of muscle mass.  And that is because hypertrophy refers to the size of the muscle and strength refers to the actual force production of the muscle itself.  These may seem like I am arguing about nothing here, but it is super important to understand if we want to improve things such as function and therefore reduce our risks of injury.

Building strength is the key to reducing the risks of injury (although to be fair, the evidence on this can be flaky at times…..but it is better than most other types of injury prevention ideas!).

The key is in understanding ‘HOW’ you build the strength

A recent study helped explain the way we can develop and build strength using a wide range of interventions.  And its not as hard as you may think!  The key is in understanding ‘HOW’ you build the strength.

The first thing to be aware of is that frequency does not always mean you will get greater gains.  So with this we mean, you do not need to be in the gym 6 days per week in order to gain strength.  Hypertrophy gains are slightly different but in the world of rehab and injury prevention, we rarely aim for hypertrophy.  Strength gains enable us to meet the demands of the environment sufficiently enough.

When it comes to building strength, many of us think that we have to lift heavy and have long rest.  But emerging evidence now suggests that in fact, it’s not so much the weight you lift or the frequency but instead it’s the total volume.  We should therefore be focused on the time that the muscle is under tension, rather than how heavy can we lift. Why does this matter?  Because a big fear that many have is that if they lift heavy then they may injure themselves.  This research though is suggesting that by lowering the weight and increasing the number of repetitions, then you can build strength effectively that way.

And I can hear all of you shouting ‘yeah but that’s what we have always known and that’s how you build muscular endurance’….but this research is now showing that the same strength gains can be made through using lighter weights and high reps as they can with heavier weights and lower reps.

With  respect  to  time efficiency  it  can  be  argued  that  heavy load training is preferable as fewer repetitions means less training time. Performing a high number of repetitions is also metabolically taxing, and accordingly a higher perceived discomfort has been reported with high-repetition training (using 50% of 1RM) compared to low repetition training (using 80% of 1RM).  It is also worth noting here that when using heavy loads you do not need to go to failure each time, whereas with lighter loads you generally do.

With all that being said though, it is now clear that not having time to build strength cannot be an excuse.  With some evidence even pointing towards as little as 15 minutes per day (where volume is a key driver) being suitable for strength gains, we all can be confident that a small change to our daily routine can result in great changes and therefore lead to reduced chances of injury.

Here at Bodylogics we work with many patients on finding ways to incorporate your rehab into your daily life.  Our therapists are trained to degree level know exactly how to get you to your end goal.  Contact us now to find out more and start your rehab journey with us.