Sure, you want your muscles to look massive, but you can put on size/girth (hypertrophy), without actually building strength. As a bodybuilder, this is one of the worst mistakes you can make. For those who are new to the world of bodybuilding, you need to understand the importance of developing strength, rather than simply putting on mass. Here we’ll focus on why it is so important for you to develop strength, as you put on mass.
The Adaptation Process: How Your Body Works in Survival Mode
Think about it for a minute. When you’re lifting weights, you’re putting additional stress on your body. What’s the reaction? Your body is going to adapt for it to survive. As humans, adaptation is our means of survival. When it comes to bodybuilding, this is also the case. You put stress on your body (weight), it adapts, and selectively finds ways to respond to the situation you’re putting it in.
With bodybuilding, you’ll have to develop a conscious communication with your body throughout the process. As you adapt, you find new ways to grow, new ways to apply added stress, and in turn, your body again selectively responds for it to survive. For you to build strength and grow, you need to physically communicate with your body. Let’s focus on the importance of building strength first, and things you’ll want to avoid as a beginner, to ensure your body adapts and survives in the environment you’re placing it in.
Building Strength Should be Your Primary Goal as a Beginner
You always want to begin your journey with the primary focus and goal of building strength. What good is hypertrophy-alone, if you can’t lift the groceries out of your car, or lift an awkward item in the office because you don’t have the strength to do so? Strength is important because you need it! Think about that for a second. You need strength to
- Push or pull heavy objects
- Get out of a compromising situation if you’re stuck somewhere
- Help your family/friend if they’re in trouble
- Lift a heavy object off of you, and so forth.
If you don’t have the physical strength to do these things, how are you going to get out of a difficult situation? And, if you have large muscles, which aren’t properly developed, what good is that when you’re in a stressful, dangerous, or otherwise compromising situation?
As you can see by these simple examples, strength is something you NEED, while hypertrophy, or large muscles, is more of a want. And, remember as we mentioned earlier, with any new bodybuilding routine, you’re going to put on mass and look larger, it’s the nature of lifting.
The greatest difference in building strength versus building mass is volume and repetition. With hypertrophy, you need to put in more volume training. This means for every exercise you’re performing, you’re doing more reps for that body part, you’re increasing training volume. With building strength, on the other hand, we’re more focused on increasing mass and reducing reps. So, you’re adding on more weight, so your muscles and body will get stronger, for shorter periods.
This should be your goal early on as a bodybuilder. Have more strength, so you have more ability. The stronger you are, the more you can do. This is the sole importance of building strength, versus simply trying to look bigger.
What you want to Avoid as a Beginner (and as you Advance)
Okay, so now that we’ve focused on building for strength versus building for size/hypertrophy, what should you avoid doing as a new bodybuilder? We know why it’s important for you to build strength, and we’ve focused on the importance of increasing mass versus increasing repetition. Some things you’ll want to avoid when you’re just getting started with a new routine are
- Overworking a muscle group: Therefore, don’t overwork a single muscle group day in and day out. You’re not going to see the results you want, and you aren’t going to grow as massive as you think you are.
- Doing too many reps: Instead, focus on the heavier weight, fewer reps, and shorter recovery periods between reps
- Too much rest between sets
- Workouts not centered around core muscle groups
- Not warming up properly
The Final Word…
Regardless of how bulky you ultimately choose to become, you always want to start the process with developing strength. For those who are new to bodybuilding, any program you take on will build both size and strength. The simple fact that your load managing, and you probably have a smaller/leaner frame, means you’re going to bulk up. Set a goal, build your strength, then focus on hypertrophy through repetition. It’s the best approach, will result in a well-developed frame, and will also ensure you don’t injure yourself in the process.
IBM
Your topic is not one I would normally be interested in, but was curious because of my specific problem. I used to be a very strong woman. Now, at age 81, I find my strength has dissipated. I feel the need to rebuild, just to keep my body in good working condition. If I could talk to you right now, I’d ask if you know of a regimen that is good specifically for the older people who would like to regain their strength. It is hard to know what kind of program to get into when you just need to rebuild. Not much into beefing up my body or my muscles — I just want to continue having good health. It seems to me that body strength is one good thing to develop. What would you suggest?
Hi Fran
I wouldn’t want to give out advice like that to someone your age without knowing you. What I would suggest is first contact your doctor and let him/her know your thinking of lifting weights. If they give you the okay, then I would call around to the local gyms and find a trainer. But make sure they know how to work with seniors.
It’s great you want to stay in good health indeed you are blessed. Thanks for sharing.
All the best
Eric
Strength is very integral to body building as it would serve as the pillar to which everything else would be built on. This is really great one and I fancy it a lot. For any beginner, building body requires creating a background that surpasses just building body but also building the right parts and having the discipline to. Thanks
Hi Roland
Thanks for commenting.
All the best
Eric
Thanks for this post on strength and body building, i think this is a nice post for a someone interested in building his body, my view is that foe a starter, he should not be too concentrated on building his body ,because this will cause him a ok me extra work and may end up tearing apart his muscles , thanks
Hi Rose
You’re welcome. When starting a weighting program it pays to be cautious. Thanks for sharing.
All the best
Eric
Thanks for sharing this post on how to build our strength and body, you have written some good point on what a starter of body builder should not be after, honestly, mostly everyone working out today wanna build-up their body with a day, which doesn’t work it takes time and work,thanks for this post
Hi Grace
You’re welcome. Indeed it takes & work. Thanks for sharing.
All the best
Eric
Strength is the bedrock of body building. Without building strength, one cannot body build and without building strength, it would always be a futile in effort to build the body. This is a good post and I value it a lot. Thanks so much for sharing this here. I know of friends who will need this
Hi Juilanne
You’re welcome. Thanks for commenting and sharing my post with your friends.
All the best
Eric
Hi there and thanks for your informative article
Ive recently started building muscle mass through additional weight work and I’m finding it really difficult to recover after a couple of days training.
Ive been following a program for around a month now so I would have expected the recovery time to improve by now. Usually I train three days and then a rest day.
Do you have any advice on how I can decrease my recovery time and the amount of discomfort?
Hi Marketa
You’re welcome. Congrats on additional work to build muscle mass. You should read my post Post Recovery Best Tips After a Grueling Workout I believe it will quite helpful to you. Thanks for sahring.
All the best
Eric