050120 Muscular hypertrophy by Daniel Pare CSO, NCCP
Daniel Pare CSO, NCCP, prominent strength coach and owner of the St. Thomas Strength and Athletics gym located in St. Thomas, Canada very clearly explains the differences.
My appreciation goes out to Daniel for the information he presents in the following paragraphs. Danny
Strength training has become a very popular approach to training, but it still a very misunderstood concept. Should kids train to become bigger or stronger? Before we go into details let’s review some basic facts.
There are two kinds of muscular hypertrophy.
1) Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is the increase in size of the muscle or bodybuilding-type training. The common approach with sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is higher repetition sets. An example would be sets of 3 x 10. Such an approach to training will indeed produce a muscular pump, therefore, an increase in size of the muscle. This approach to training does not relate to strength training, but to a bodybuilding-type approach.
2) Myofibril hypertrophy is synonymous to the increase in strength of the same muscle. Here the athlete will train towards strengthening the muscles and the approach will be using lower repetition sets (3 to 5) and to more extent, the exercises are multiple joint exercises and they are performed more dynamically. With this kind of approach, the athlete should not expect so much of a muscular pump, but instead an increase in balance, agility, strength and speed; all of which are essential to sports performance and or daily life activities.
*Daniel Pare, Strength Coach
ActivelyFitSeniors 