Considering that I have no competitions coming up, or any plans in the near future, and even thought my end goal is strength demonstration in the Big Lifts, I want to spend more time Building muscles like a Body Builder but for the purpose more strength.
Would it make more sense to go on a slight surplus and follow a more body building specific program to build a good base, or should I continue to cycle a strength block (Legacy strength or PL2) and Hyper.
My current lifts are 200 DL, 175 Squat, 110 Bench and I would like to lift 300 + squats and DL, and 4 wheel bench someday.
As a 40 year old Lifetime natty, should I spend more time building muscles or keep chipping away kilo by kilo using the strength based templates.
I am asking because BBM believes in increasing muscle cross section area for strength potential.
What would be a better approach if I am in no hurry to hit the big number and I a willing to fight in the trenches to build those muscles cross sectional area with a slow clean bulk, like a body bodybuilder lean bulk.
I think to increase muscular size the most we would generally advise a hypertrophy focused program. That said, you’re relatively untrained at this point and you’re likely to get a good hypertrophy response from a either a strength or hypertrophy focused program.
I’m not sure how long you’ve been training either, but overall, we’d recommend using both strength and hypertrophy-focused training programs as you go along your training career.
I will keep cycling the Strength Templates with Hypertrophy blocks as I have been doing then.
I did SL 5x5 in 2012, getting upto a 125 kg squat for 5x5 and then back pain (I didn’t know better) and then fooled around without getting any gains in the gym, quite in 2014, and restarted in 2016 seriously SSNLP, then 531, until I started BBM last july. 1 year with BBM now. Been training consistently for almost 3 years now. But gains are slow as I might be a slow responder
I didn’t regress much running hypertrophy for 5-6 months on a cut. I am fresh out of a cut and wanting to add some muscles, specially upper body which looks emaciated
Sure, you could be a slow responder or the training may have been inappropriate for you thus far. An anecdote and some science may provide clarity.
Dr. Baraki is a great example of how early responses to training are relatively meaningless outside of building self-efficacy and ensuring adherence to a behavior (e.g. training). Dr. B ran a linear progression when he first started training to take his squat up to 285lbs. Based on compiled self-reported data, this is about the average response we’d expect along with the program “working” for ~9 weeks and a <2% adherence rate. In any event, Dr. B took his squat up to 625lbs over the next 4 years at a body weight of ~200lbs, which is an elite level squat. This suggests a few things:
The predictive power of early training success (or failure) on long-term training outcomes is low. There are people who have taken their squats much higher than Dr. B during their “novice” progression, who have never (and will never) squat 600+ due to a variety of reasons.
Training management for beginners should focus on building self-efficacy and adherence. It matters little what someone squats in 3 months compared to what they’re squatting in 3 years and if they’re still squatting at all.
Tracking progress can help identify programming preferences that the individual responds to better (or worse). If someone isn’t responding well to training, the dose (volume and frequency) and/or the formulation (exercise selection, intensity, rep scheme, etc.) may be incorrect. Alternatively, they may be a poor responder.
A really cool paper from Ahtianen et al looked at the muscle size and strength responses for 287 (183 men, 104 women) individuals who were on the same resistance training program 20-24 weeks. A few interesting findings:
The absolute change in 1RM and muscle size wasn’t different between men and women.
Strength varied wildly across individuals, with 13.8% being deemed high responders (> 1 standard deviation higher than mean response) and 6.7% being defined as low responders (> 1 standard deviation lower than mean response).
Relative changes in 1RM ranged from -8% (yea, people got worse) to +60% (yea, some people thrived).
Relative changes in muscle size ranged from -11% (yea, some people got smaller) and +30% (yea, some people got jacked).
29.3 % were defined as low responders (>1 standard deviation lower than mean response) for muscle size gains and 12.2 % were defined as high responders (> 1 standard deviation higher than mean response).
In summary, we expect a wide range of responses to a given training intervention based on the individual’s unique biological, psychological, and sociocultural characteristics. However, individual characteristics like gender, age, and race do not appear to reliably influence training response, which means we would not modify a training program based on these characteristics. Additionally, no program works "every time it is applied" despite what you may read on The Internet. Finally, it is very difficult- if not impossible- to predict how someone will respond to training long term, as the cumulative effects of favorable individual characteristics take time to manifest. Someone who responded poorly to poor programming might thrive when the training dose and/or formulation changes.