Hypertrophy Training and the Bodybuilder Workout: Does it Increase Athletic Performance?

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Without question, the greatest common denominator among high school and college athletes is that they all want to get bigger.  If you’ve read my “About” page, you know that I was guilty of this same line of thought once upon a time.

There is NO CORRELATION BETWEEN MUSCLE SIZE AND ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE , but there definitely appears to be a direct correlation between muscle strength and athletic movements.  The problem is that many athletes will adopt a bodybuilding approach which isn’t the same as a strength building approach.  Bodybuilders may look strong, but they often aren’t as strong as you would expect.  It’s more important for them to LOOK good.  Not to mention, body builders do not move like athletes, because they don’t have to.    

What’s the difference?  Don’t big muscles equal big strength?  Not necessarily.

The 2 major variables that affect strength are the muscle’s cross-sectional area (thickness of the muscle) and neuromuscular efficiency (brain-muscle communication). 

Generally speaking, the thicker a muscle is, the more forcefully it can contract because it contains a larger number of contractile proteins. 

As for neuromuscular efficiency, every muscle contraction starts in the brain, and training creates changes in the central nervous system that allow you to contract your muscles faster, more forcefully, and more efficiently. 

Gains in muscle size and neuromuscular efficiency happen independently, so you can’t predict how strong someone is from the size of his muscles.  An athlete with smaller muscles but a high level of neuromuscular efficiency will often out-lift a person with larger muscles but a lower level of neuromuscular efficiency. 

Training to increase a muscle’s cross-sectional area is different from training to increase neuromuscular efficiency.  Beginning lifters will quickly see an increase in both, but the more experienced you get, it becomes impossible to train the two simultaneously, because you can’t maximize the volume and load of lifting at the same time.  Load and reps are inversely related.  The more weight you lift, the fewer times you can lift it.  Along the same lines, the more times you plan to lift a weight, the lighter the weight must be. 

To maximize training volume and increase muscle size, you have to limit the amount of weight lifted, so you don’t become exhausted too quickly.  In other words, you want to perform a lot of sets and reps with moderately heavy weights.  In this scenario, you will ultimately reach a point where the volume of training will come at the expense of neuromuscular efficiency, causing strength to plateau.  

But, to maximize the amount of weight you lift and increase muscle strength, you have to limit your training volume since lifting heavy weights will cause faster muscle fatigue.  So, to increase strength you have to find a way to balance muscle growth with gains in neuromuscular efficiency. 

Training provides 3 particular adaptations that enhance the most important factor in muscle strength . . . neuromuscular efficiency.

• The more muscle tissue that is involved in a contraction, the more force that muscle will produce.  The average beginning weightlifter only activates about half of the tissue in a given muscle when contracting it with maximum force.  The training process increases the brain’s ability to activate more muscle tissue.
• Training also enables the muscles to contract more powerfully as electrical signals begin to travel faster from the brain’s motor center to the muscles. 
• The brain also learns to coordinate muscle activities more efficiently beyond the major muscle groups.  Joints are stabilized better as proprioceptive muscles are turned on, and joint movements become more efficient. 

When examining the difference between a strength building workout and a bodybuilding workout, you have to look at the movements that are being performed.  In general, training for strength places a greater emphasis on whole-body movements, while bodybuilding workouts tend to isolate muscles more.  Take a look at the video of pro bodybuilder Johnnie Jackson below . . .

Notice a couple things.  One, Johnnie is performing all single joint movements to isolate his biceps and triceps.  Look familiar?  I cringe when I see athletes performing these movements instead of a row or press because sports performance isn’t about isolated body parts; it’s about synergistic movement and coordination of the body.  Second, Johnnie is moving very quickly from lift to the next, which is creating a high volume of sets and reps in his workout.  BUT, it isn’t allowing him to build maximal strength because of the lack of recovery time.

Another training consideration is fiber types.  Muscles contain both type I and type II fibers.  Type I fibers are associated with endurance , while type II fibers promote more forceful contractions, or strength.  The significance here is that a bodybuilder workout challenges the type I fibers more than strength training because of the demands on volume and lifting lighter weights more times.  On the other hand, strength training challenges the type II fibers more.

And, guess what fiber type translates into better sports performance??  You guessed it . . . type II fibers!!  

As stated above, strength has a much greater impact on athletic performance than does size.  We shouldn’t train our athletes with the goal of increasing muscle size, because it takes the focus off increasing performance.  I’m not against bigger athletes; I just want to make sure the new size is functional.   We want to develop propulsive mass that either enhances speed or provides better results in collision sports. 

If you add mass to an athlete, you BETTER get him stronger, or you will have a bigger but slower and less explosive athlete. 

Consider that the ideal outcome of a training period would be to increase lean body mass, increase vertical jump, but decrease sprint times.  This isn’t easy to do. 

A good training outcome would be to increase lean body mass while maintaining the same vertical jump and sprint times.  This means that we have a better athlete who now moves greater mass with the same speed.

On the other end of the spectrum would be the athlete who increases lean body mass but sees a decrease in vertical jump or speed.  This is all too common for the athlete who performs the body builder workout and is consumed with size rather than function.

We have to identify those athletes who are more concerned about their appearance than their performance.  This may sound cruel, but those individuals should go ahead and pursue a career in modeling, whereas those who want to play sports should be training like athletes.

The training process is likely going to produce a more muscular look as a bi-product, not because we’re trying to achieve it.  I think Boston-based trainer, Mike Boyle, said it best when he stated, “I don’t want our athletes to train to look better.  I want them to look better because they train.”

Agree, disagree?  Let me know what you think.

Your Coach,

Brian Utley

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