Here’s why Strength and Hypertrophy are two very Different Things
Strength and hypertrophy are two very different things
Strength and hypertrophy are two words people often use interchangeably even though they have different meanings. And all though an increase in muscle mass can produce more strength that’s not always the cause.
Strength
Strength is the maximal amount of output you are able to perform on an exercise. It’s between the 1–8 rep range, 80–100%RM. When performing exercises within this rep range, it’s best to work close to failure to stimulate the muscle but also give it enough time to recover
Hypertrophy
Hypertrophy means the ability to gain muscle mass due to adapting to a stimulus. This deals with the 5–15 rep range, 60–80%RM. When it comes to hypertrophy it’s best to perform an exercise close or to failure to stimulate the muscle as much as possible.
Neural adaptions
There are two components to strength: neural muscular adaptations x muscle cross-sectional area. Neural adaptions deal with mechanisms that cause neural responses to occur:
Rate of coding: Your body's ability to send electrical impulses to the muscle makes it contract faster.
Antagonist inhibition: The ability of the opposite muscular group performing an exercise to be less resistant.
Synchronization: How fast your muscles can contract due to the adaption of a stimulus.
Recruitment: The number of muscle fibers recruited for a movement.
Contribution: How effectively timed the different contributing muscles to a movement are fired.
The muscle cross-sectional area is the point between your anatomical cross-sectional area (ACSA) and PCSA physiological cross-sectional area (PCSA) contracting between one another. The green line represents the PSCA muscle contraction point, while the blue line represents the ASCA. Contraction of a muscle is important for strength because it puts the muscle under tension causing adaptations to occur.
Last Words
I hope now you now know the difference between strength and hypertrophy as well as the different components that are involved in strength. If you have any questions you can leave it in the comments below.
— Thanks for reading! 💖
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