The Beginner’s Guide to Strength Training (Part 12 of 30): Adaptations

The number of repetitions you select drives the program and how your body changes. And by using different numbers or reps, you can target different things — specifically, strength, “hypertrophy.” and endurance. In this post, I’ll discuss what each one means, the different rep ranges you’ll need to use, and the amount of rest you’ll need with each one.

We’ll also tackle the biggest myth about getting bulky. (Keep reading to find out.)

What Are Adaptations?

Adaptations are the changes in the body we create through strength training. Want mountains of muscle? Maybe that’s hypertrophy. Want to lift cars like they’re toothpicks? Strength. Here are the three major adaptations:

Strength

I broke down strength in a previous article in this series — it’s basically the maximal amount of force you can push.

You train for strength with low reps (1 – 6) and very high weight (85+% of your one-rep max). Also, because of the intensity with each set, you’ll want longer rest periods between them — 3-5 minutes is plenty. The number of sets you should do varies, but shoot for under 25 total reps for that particular exercise and weight. For example, during your front squat workout, you did this:

250lbs x 4
250lbs x 4
250lbs x 4
250lbs x 4
250lbs x 4

That’s 20 total reps of 250lbs. (That’ll get you strong!) Heck, you can do even less than that — Dan John and Pavel Tsatsouline wrote about the benefits of doing just 10 total reps for a strength workout, and no more. They call this the “Rule of Ten” in their book, Easy Strength.

On top of just lifting more weight, training for strength has a lot of neurological benefits: using near-maximal weights will recruit all your motor units, which boosts your performance in the weight room and on the the field. (The bar might not move fast with heavy weights, but if you’re giving it your all – don’t worry – you’ll contract 100% of your motor units.)

Hypertrophy

Hypertrophy means “muscle growth.”

To train hypertrophy, you want to use moderate reps (6 – 12) and moderate weight (70% – 85% of your one-rep max). Also, because it’s not as heavy as pure strength training, you can use shorter rest times between sets (1 – 3 minutes).

The total number of reps you’ll target depends on several factors, but you can’t go wrong with 30 – 50. Here’s a simple example of hypertrophy training:

180lbs x 12
180lbs x 12
180lbs x 12
180lbs x 12

That’s 48 total reps at 180lbs. (You will feel that burn.)

Another benefit from hypertrophy training is the higher “time-under-tension” (TUT), which refers the number of seconds a muscle is under load. For more growth, increase your TUT to 30 seconds or higher. There are several ways to do that, and adding more reps is one. Changing the tempo – the speed of your lift – is another way, but I’ll save that for a different article.

Critical Differences Between Strength and Hypertrophy

Here’s where almost all gymgoers get confused: “Which one makes you bulky? Strength or hypertrophy?”

The answer is hypertrophy.

Yes, hypertrophy training — moderate weights for more reps. (The very same “moderate weights for more reps” that most people mistakenly think will not make them bulky — thus my frustration.) This type of training triggers “sarcoplasmic hypertrophy,” which is fancy, smarty-pants way of saying that it fills your muscles with blood, fluid, and proteins that don’t necessarily make you stronger.

This is also known in bodybuilding circles as “the pump” — when you get the “pump” in your muscles, you’ll look bulkier.

Strength training, in fact, does NOT make you bulky.

Using heavy weights for low reps falls in the Absolute Strength phase of the “Absolute Strength / Absolute Speed Continuum” and creates something called “myofibrillar hypertrophy” — another fancy-pants way of saying that it hits your skeletal muscle and makes your body add more and make them bigger. The width of your actual, lean muscle mass is called the cross-sectional area (CSA) and that’s correlated to your absolute strength levels. In other words, the stronger you are, the thicker your lean body mass will be.

“Wait, didn’t you just say strength training won’t make you bulkier?”

Yes. Because, without the use of steroids, that’s not easy to do.

When someone says, “oh, I don’t lift weights because I’ll gain too much muscle,” I shake my head. Guys, your body just doesn’t work like that — in fact, with hard work and a lot of heavy lifting, it takes weeks just to add one measly pound of pure, lean muscle.

Endurance

You train for endurance training with high reps (15+) and light weight (sub-65% of one-rep max). This has two distinct benefits within the muscles:

• Increased capillary density.

  The capillaries are the part of the circulatory system that brings fresh blood and oxygen to the muscles. With endurance training, you’ll increase the number of capillaries within the muscle, promoting a better flow of nutrients. This also has the added benefit of clearing more waste from the muscles allowing it to run more optimally.

• Increased mitochondrial density.

  The mitochondria are found within cells and have the vital function of generating energy. (You don’t have to be a biologist to know how important that is.) Specifically, they take nutrients and convert them to ATP, which fuels muscle activity.

Not as much rest is needed with endurance training. Total reps vary, of course, but over 50 should suffice.

Endurance training, however, is not a good way to get strong. According to Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning (the Bible for us strength coaches), the weight you can use for a 15-rep max is only 65% of the weight you can use for a one-rep max. Where’s the intensity?

Here, the volume is extremely high, but the intensity is low. That’s not enough weight to develop strength and build a lot of muscle.

That’s why it’s so important to understand the adaptations with different rep ranges in strength training. If you look at it from the Absolute Strength perspective, endurance training doesn’t make sense; but from an athletic standpoint, it’s very beneficial because of the changes in the cellular and circulatory levels. Not to mention, a good way to target the Type I muscle fibers.

Also note that there is a gray area between rep ranges. It’s quite possible to target both strength and hypertrophy. Or hypertrophy and endurance. Again, it all depends on your goals. But rather than blending the two, you can set your exercise program in a way to *have your fitness cake and eat it too.*

I’ll discuss that in the next article.

---

Now that you understand the rep ranges and adaptations, be sure to check out the next article of this series where I talk about the best way to get consistent results and progress: periodization. In your training program, you want to switch between different training cycles — I’ll teach you how most people program themselves into a corner, the most common ways to periodize, and which one is best (yes, there is a “best”).

Throughout this seres, I’m sure you’ll have a lot of questions, so be sure to ask using the comment section of this post. Feel free to reach out to me via Facebook and Twitter to get your question answered. See you soon!