is gaining strenght the same as gaining muscle mass?

[cendrine]

Hi Cathe,

I am currently reading the book BFFM and am learning that in order to lose fat you need a calorie deficit and in order to gain muscle you need a calorie surplus.

I am wondering about STS. Since it is designed to get me 5% stronger by the end of the 3 mesocycles, does that mean I should train with a calorie surplus during the STS training, or is strenght increase not the same as muscle growth?

And if I have fat loss as a goal, is STS with added cardio a good way to go or should I wait to do STS until I have reached the desired body fat % and then do the STS?

Of course anyone else who knows their stuff can chime in! Thanks!

 

[morningstar]

This is a recent question for me as well, as I have been reading that gaining muscle mass is not the same thing as gaining strength, and I'm like "HUH? If you're not getting stronger when your muscles get bigger, what IS going on?"

 

[cendrine]

Does anyone have any idea about this?

 

[wendybdh]

I would love to know the answer to this also

 

[Aquajock]

Certainly Cathe is the authority on this subject, but I recall reading several articles in fitness journals and textbooks that state that absolute strength development and muscle mass development / hypertrophy are not necessarily synonymous. You look at power lifters, who lift excruciatingly heavy weightloads - they are not that massive compared to the loads they are lifting. And I also remember that little Olympic medalist / pipsqueak Sasha Cohen, who tipped the scales at a whole 95 pounds: she routinely leg-pressed 400 pounds as part of her training program.

I would like to get Cathe's take on this subject as well, given how long she's been strength training (and I think she once was a competitive body builder but I may be wrong on that).

A-Jock

 

[kathryn]

I'm copying and pasting myself from a post in the GD:

Usually strength and size do go together to some degree, but not always.
When one is first starting weight training, strength improvements occur without size changes because initial strength gains are from neuro-muscular adaptation (your nervous system becoming more effective).

Different protocols (as in STS' different phases) are recommended for gaining strength (with some size gains, but emphasis on strength) vs. gainig size (with some strength gains, but emphasis on size).

I personally can gain a lot more strength than size, which is fine with me (I'd rather be stronger and smaller than not as strong and bigger). That is what happened to me on P90X. I did get size and definition, though not what I would consider proportionate to my strength gains.

 

[cendrine]

Thanks for this, Kathryn,

so what do you do then, when you work on gaining strenght? Do you eat to have a surplus of calories (I guess what I'm asking is, do you need a surplus of calories to gain strenght, or is a maintenance calorie intake going to give you the strenght you are supposed to be able to develop on STS?)

I feel like you do, that I don't need the bulk to show my strength, I'm happy just getting stronger, even if I don't have bigger muscles to show off...

 

[kathryn]

so what do you do then, when you work on gaining strenght? Do you eat to have a surplus of calories (I guess what I'm asking is, do you need a surplus of calories to gain strenght, or is a maintenance calorie intake going to give you the strenght you are supposed to be able to develop on STS?)

Hmmm..interesting question.
I don't pay close attention to calories, but I get stronger (I eat pretty much the same or a bit more, though sometimes what I was eating was a bit of a surplus in the first place! LOL!). The important thing is recovery (allow enough time between sets and between workouts to recovery, so you can lift your heaviest) and trying to increase weights with almost every workout. STS is supposed to include the necessary recovery between sets in Meso 3 to gain strength.