I have been learning a lot about programming and understand the role of specificity. A question I have is it possible to focus on strength and hypertrophy at the same time without compromising on either if you don’t care about strength and hypertrophy equally for all movements / muscle groups?
Like many people, I want to get “big and strong.” But rather than alternate strength and hypertrophy, why not focus on strength-style program for compound movements (squat, deadlift, (bench) press) and then use your remaining recovery budget for hypertrophy-style training for delts/arms/upper back/calves?
My thinking is I’d much rather be able to squat/deadlift/bench press heavy than have heavily sculpted legs and chest, because those bigger muscle groups have more of an impact on my overall general fitness, strength and lifestyle. But similarly, I don’t really care if I can curl an 80lb dumbbell, it won’t make much of a difference to my overall life, so I’d much rather do hypertrophy style training for arms/delts/abs/calves and just have a more attractive physique without necessarily maxing out strength.
Could this make for a more effective programming approach for the average person looking to get “big and strong” than a typical powerbuilding program or alternating between strength and hypertrophy programs throughout the year for the full body?
Welcome to the forum and thanks for the question. I think the answer to this question depends on who’s asking. For someone new to training, there’s so much overlap between strength and hypertrophy, that a decent program isn’t going to compromise much of either adaptation, if any at all. For someone more advanced, I don’t think it’s really possible to maximize both at the same time due to a lack of resources.
You hint at it here when you mention recovery budget. If someone were truly trying to maximize strength progress, they’d dedicate the majority (if not all) of their recovery budget towards strength work. This will build a fair amount of size no doubt, but not as much as a hypertrophy-focused program. The same is true in reverse. A hypertrophy-focused program will build a fair amount of strength, but not as much as a strength-focused program.
Theoretically, any combination of the two is a compromise on some level. I think that in theory, the compromise is modest in most lifters, and significant in very well-trained folks. In practice however, the compromise shows up more than I’d like, mostly because people don’t really train enough to be near their max tolerable training load, so that compromise stacked on top of this compromise, plus or minus any other lifestyle compromise all adds up (food, sleep, consistency measured in years).
How much this compromise really “costs” is truly unknown and varies by individual. I think I see it more when people follow really bad programming. The muscle you can add in a week or a month is low, and it’s driven mostly by mechanical tension plus having the recovery to build the tissue. Once a program supplies enough of both, you’re near the achievable rate, and swapping in “better” hypertrophy exercises or piling on more volume nudges you a little closer to a ceiling you were already close to. You’d have to program pretty badly to miss most of the available hypertrophy, and a compound-centric program doesn’t have to be badly programmed.
Further reading (unchanged from before, both still fit)