The Relationship Between Building Muscle and Building Strength

When I first got into training it was bodybuilding that had my attention. I used to read all of the popular bodybuilding magazines — Flex, Muscle and Fitness, Muscular Development, MuscleMag, etc. I even read Arnold’s massive Encyclopedia to Modern Bodybuilding cover to cover multiple times, it still sits on my bookshelf to this day.

No matter how far down the strength path I get, building muscle will always be important to me. The fact is, building muscle should be important to any powerlifter or strength athlete. A bigger muscle has a greater potential to be a stronger muscle.

On the flip side, just as building muscle is beneficial to gaining strength, gaining strength can be beneficial in building muscle as well.

It’s time we stop thinking the two qualities are mutually exclusive and take a look at the bigger picture moving forward.

Training for Muscle vs. Training for Strength

When you ask someone the difference between training for muscle and training for strength, the answer you usually get has something to do with rep ranges.

The general recommendation is, train with heavy weight and low reps for strength and moderate weight with moderate reps for size (hypertrophy).

These adaptations overlap to some degree (you’re never truly stimulating only one or even two adaptations), but this is how it’s generally broken down:

• 1–5 reps = Strength/Power (depending on load used)
• 5–8 reps = Strength/Hypertrophy
• 8–12 reps = Hypertrophy
• 12–15 reps = Hypertrophy/Muscular Endurance
• 15+ reps = Muscular Endurance

This has shown to be relatively effective in practice and it makes sense. However, there is more to the story than just rep ranges.

Last year I wrote an article talking about how powerlifting and bodybuilding training may not be as different as some might think. See “In Defense of Powerlifting: Why It’s Not Hurting Bodybuilding“.

The general premise was, powerlifting training can be a great tool for an offseason bodybuilder. To make this point I referenced research done by Brad Schoenfeld who found that as long as volume was equated (Volume = sets x reps x weight), there was little difference between a powerlifting (10 sets of 3) and a bodybuilding (3 sets of 10) routine in terms of muscle growth.

What’s more? As expected, the 10 sets of 3 group made superior strength gains.

Based off this, here is what we know:

1- Weight on the bar (intensity) plays a big role in gaining strength. If you want to get stronger you need to lift heavy…duh. This is nothing revolutionary, we have recognized low reps do a great job of building maximal strength for a long time.

2- What we didn’t know, at least from a scientific standpoint, is that low reps and heavy weight can be equally effective at building muscle. Overall volume is the key player here.

As long as volume is equated, there might be more to hypertrophy training than just a rep range. If nothing else, this tells us we don’t have to keep all reps in the moderate range in order to build muscle. Low reps can build muscle too, as long as the volume is there.

Plus, lifting heavy has an underlying benefit in the quest for muscle growth. Remember the equation for Volume (V= sets x reps x weight). Weight is the missing link in most yearly bodybuilding programs. Lifting more weight is another way to increase overall training volume. When you improve your strength by training in low rep ranges, that strength carries over when you switch back to more of a bodybuilding/higher rep routine.

Now before we go any further, there was one other point I feel must be brought up. In the study, the powerlifting routine took significantly longer to complete than the bodybuilding one.

This makes sense because heavy sets take longer to recover from. In order to go as heavy as possible you need at least a 2–3 minute rest period between sets. If you have never focused on strength before, trust me, powerlifting style workouts take a long time!

Since going heavy takes longer, it’s generally going to be easier to get in more volume using a moderate rep range. This is why the middle rep range (6–12 reps) has been coined the “hypertrophy zone” and is considered better for bodybuilding purposes.

If you learn nothing else from this article, pay attention to this — there is nothing inherently special about a specific rep range in terms of building muscle, it really comes down to what facilitates optimal training volume. There can be a benefit to every rep range.

Does Bigger = Stronger?

We just talked about how focusing on strength can carry over to building muscle. Now the question becomes, how can building muscle benefit someone focused on strength?

Like I mentioned previously, “a bigger muscle has the potential to be a stronger muscle”.

The fact is, when it comes to strength, muscle size is the single most important factor. But it’s not the only factor.

Aside from muscle size, there are a few additional factors why some people are stronger than others. These include — muscle fiber types, limb lengths, muscle insertions and motor learning/neural drive. With all of these “other” things being equal, a bigger muscle is a stronger muscle.

Gaining muscle is basically like gaining potential strength. You might not immediately get stronger but by adding muscle you have raised your strength ceiling so to speak.

Think about it, if muscle development were irrelevant there would be no need to have weight classes in powerlifting. At the very least you wouldn’t see as much variation from lightweights to heavyweights. However, when you look at the results from any powerlifting meet, the winning totals get much higher as the weight classes go up.

We all know, at least intuitively, that a bigger person is generally stronger than a smaller person. From a broscience perspective this boils down to one thing, if you want to get stronger, you need to get bigger.

With that being said, those “other” factors mentioned above deserve some attention. Size isn’t everything. Those other factors are still very important and help to explain why it’s not uncommon for a huge bodybuilder to get “out lifted” by a smaller powerlifter.

In the quest to improve strength there are only two things we can control through training.

1- Muscular Development

2- Neural Drive

We can’t do anything about the other factors such as muscle fiber types, limb lengths or muscle insertions. They are what they are.

This means in order to get as strong as possible we need to incorporate training that improves both muscle size and neural drive.

In an effort to keep this article shorter than the Fast and the Furious series, I don’t want to dig too far down the rabbit hole of neuromuscular adaptation. For the purpose of this article, just know when we talk about neural drive we are talking about getting better at the skill of lifting heavy weights.

Absolute Strength is a skill and like any skill it get’s better with practice. As you lift heavy, you get better at lifting heavy. It’s the law of specificity.