Health and Training Focus Question

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

Question I know I am going to get trolled for, but I promise I’m not trying to be a smart ass. The question is why prioritize strength over hypertrophy? The context is I am 41M, office worker with body fat about 18-19 % (per bathroom scale and triple checked with body fat calipers). Each year that I get my fasting blood sugar checked for health insurance it runs a little high (100-105ish), but has crept up year after year. So I started checking my own blood sugar and it does run high in the morning (but runs about 85-90 during the day even after meals). My diet is pretty clean. My mother, uncle and grandfather are/were all diabetic or pre-diabetic.

From my understanding (i.e., lay-person), bigger muscles hold more glycogen (as opposed to stronger but smaller, I guess?), so in theory bigger muscles would keep my blood sugar lower? I did the NLP and am stronger than I have ever been, and have a couple of strength goals. But really, I just want to my middle and late years as healthy as possible.

Thanks for your input.

P.S. It’s a damn shame I didn’t learn how to train properly 20 year ago!

2

The current evidence on sarcopenia suggests that strength is a better predictor of adverse outcomes (including mortality) compared to skeletal muscle mass.

With that said, increasing skeletal muscle mass is certainly a worthy goal and can provide metabolic / health benefits as well, and there may be certain individual situations where shifting focus more towards hypertrophy vs. strength may be appropriate.