Strength vs. Hypertrophy Training (8 Key Differences)

Contrary to popular belief, resistance training for muscle growth is not the same as working out for strength gains.

There is some overlap between the two, but you must ultimately follow different training rules when working toward one of the two goals. 

Stick around to learn about the similarities and differences between hypertrophy and strength training, how you may choose to switch between the two, what rules you must follow in each training cycle, and how the two goals complement each other.

Key Takeaways

1. Strength training involves doing fewer sets at a higher intensity and practicing the key lifts more often. Hypertrophy improves with more sets at a more moderate intensity.
   
   
2. Strength develops best in heavy sets of 3-6 reps, whereas muscles grow well in the much wider range of 5-30 reps.
   
   
3. Strength progression revolves around adding weight to the bar, whereas progression in hypertrophy can also come from doing more reps and adding more working sets.
   
   
4. The exercise selection for strength is more narrow, with an emphasis on core barbell lifts and their close variations. In contrast, if you want to optimize growth, you can do more exercises for each muscle.
   
   
5. You should take longer rest intervals (3-5 minutes) between heavy sets that aim to build strength; however, in a hypertrophy plan, you can rest as little as 1-2 minutes between sets.
   
   
6. Strength training revolves around straight sets like 5×5. In contrast, hypertrophy training is more flexible and allows for more varied training, including using techniques like drop sets and supersets.
   
   
7. You can combine strength and hypertrophy training into a plan like PHUL. However, understand that you won’t progress optimally toward both objectives.
   
   
8. Use the Hevy app to log your strength and muscle-building workouts, track progress on each lift, record body metrics (like circumference measurements), and upload progress photos.

An Overview of Hypertrophy vs. Strength Training

At first glance, muscle and strength gain go hand in hand. After all, any weight training that will get you strong in the long run will also build muscle and vice-versa. 

But as you dive into the nuances, you realize how different the two approaches must be and how they contradict one another in key aspects like exercise selection, loading, and training volume. 

As you advance, it becomes increasingly important to remember the differences between the two training styles. Your training must become increasingly fine-tuned as you get stronger and more muscular to continue seeing improvements.

In short, hypertrophy training includes more exercises, isolation and machine work, lighter loads, shorter rest periods, and higher training volume. In contrast, strength training includes more heavy compound lifting, longer rest intervals, less isolation and machine work, a lower training volume, and better fatigue management.

This means optimizing for strength will differ from what’s considered ideal for muscle gain and vice-versa. If that seems a bit far-fetched or inaccurate, you can look at the training of powerlifters and bodybuilders. Most of the time, these two types of athletes train in different ways. 

For example, here’s a powerlifting workout example:

And here is how a bodybuilder might approach their training:

Granted, these are just two examples. But as we dive into the differences between the two training styles, you will see why it’s generally better to chase both goals separately, even if you ultimately want to be as big and strong as possible.

Resistance Training For Growth vs. Strength: The Differences

1. Training Volume

Let’s begin with a massive difference between maximizing muscle hypertrophy and strength: volume, which measures the amount of productive training you’re doing at the gym. 

At its core, strength development comes from performing well on a limited number of sets to manage fatigue. This allows you to recover well between workouts, do the important lifts more frequently (more on this in a bit), and gradually add more weight to the bar.

For instance, let’s say you’re doing five working sets on the squat. This doesn’t seem like a lot at first glance. But consider that you’ll be doing a demanding full-body lift with a weight close to your 1RM.

Plus, given that traditional strength training is more fatiguing (between setting up the weights, lifting heavy loads, and unracking afterward), keeping the total volume lower to avoid overtraining and reduced performance or a plateau makes more sense.

In contrast, training for muscle gain is not as fatiguing on a set-to-set basis (or as a whole). You don’t necessarily need to be as well-rested and have high daily readiness to perform close to optimal and continue progressing. 

Because of that, you can do more productive sets, which is also supported by research to further contribute to muscle growth.

It’s one thing to set up a gym machine and do a few sets of 12 to 15 reps when you’re tired and a whole other to do multiple sets of heavy squats or deadlifts. Even being slightly tired can throw off your strength performance and force you to reduce the load across all sets.

Given all of that, it’s typically not ideal to chase strength and muscle gains together because what’s optimal and close to your recoverable limit for strength will be below what you can and should do for optimal hypertrophy.

For example, 10 weekly sets of squats can be fantastic for strength gain; you might not need more than that to see steady improvements. However, most people, at least those with a few years of training experience, will generally need more than 10 sets of direct quadricep work to optimize growth.

A middle ground here could be to do your meat-and-potatoes strength work and include some hypertrophy assistance or isolation work in the form of less demanding exercises like leg extensions. 

However, you must consider systemic fatigue. Even if the local muscle is not overly tired, high-volume training can lead to recovery issues and may affect your performance in subsequent workouts, limiting future strength gains.

To help with this, Hevy automatically counts the number of sets per muscle. You can access and display the data on a customizable graph to see your volume and whether you’re doing enough to grow.

2. Loading

Building strength occurs best when lifting weights at 80-95% of your 1RM in the 2-6 rep range. In contrast, muscle-building training occurs anywhere in the 5—to 30-rep range. 

Another similarity is that you should have some loading variation regardless of your goal. For strength, this could mean doing heavy triples and more moderate sets of six reps; for muscle, this could mean doing sets in the 5-10, 10-15, 15-20, and 20-30 rep ranges.

But despite the similarity, the only small overlap here is that you can build good strength and muscle when doing 5-6 reps per set, but that’s about it.

You might think, “Well, what if I mostly do heavy sets of 5-6 reps. Then I can get stronger and bigger.” 

Sure, that can work if applied to a part of your training, but it’s unsustainable if you want to do enough volume to optimize muscle growth. First, sets of 5-6 reps are mentally demanding and taxing on your joints. Doing too many of them is a recipe for overtraining or burnout.

Second, high loading works for compound lifts like the bench press and deadlift, but it’s not a good approach when you need to do simpler exercises like the tricep pushdown and lateral raise. In such cases, you need to lift lighter weights for more reps to maintain proper form and maximally stimulate and isolate specific muscle groups.

3. Frequency

Training frequency for muscle growth is measured by how frequently you target each muscle, whereas for strength, it means how often you do the lifts you want to improve.

Research suggests that training each muscle two to three times per week is better than once for optimal growth. However, we could argue that a lower frequency still works and might be better if that’s all you can handle without feeling pressured to train more often. 

For instance, many people continue to be fans of approaches like the bro split. You dedicate each workout to one, two, or three muscles and do all weekly working sets. Plus, some people prefer to maximally exhaust the target muscles in one workout instead of splitting up their training volume into two or three smaller sessions that don’t feel as challenging.

Additionally, you may find a lower frequency to be better for the mind-muscle connection. Think of it like this:

If you only do five sets for the upper back in each session, you might struggle to feel the area work because it can take time to get in the groove. But if you do 15 sets for the lats in one session, you might not feel them work in the first few sets, but they will become increasingly more active as you get to sets 6, 7, and 8+.

As one Reddit user wrote, “I get amazing pumps from bro splits and feel way more motivated to go to the gym when I’m only hitting a single muscle group.”

That said, while plenty of people have seen good growth from a low frequency, doing the main lifts at least twice weekly is mandatory for optimal strength gain. As the prominent weightlifting coach John Broz said:

“If your family was kidnapped and in order to get them back, you had one month to put 100 pounds on your squat, would you squat just once a week?”

It makes sense because the more you practice a given lift, the more your skills, neuromuscular efficiency, and comfort with heavier weights improve.

So, this is another significant difference between hypertrophy and strength training. But even if we conclude that a high training frequency is equally better for both goals, it’s still important to structure individual workouts differently. 

As discussed, you can be more tired and less motivated and still perform well enough to train specific muscles for (close to) optimal growth. However, under-recovery will almost always affect your strength and performance and hinder progression.

So, a key aspect of successful training for strength gains is to train hard enough, perform well on each set, and recover well so you can return to the gym a couple of days later and do well again. 

It’s not just about the current set and how it affects the rest of your workout; it’s also about how the current session affects subsequent ones.

If your training is too challenging and affects your performance, scale back on your performance, overall volume, or effort (RPE). In some cases, especially for more advanced strength athletes, it might be beneficial to do fewer sets in favor of putting more weight on the bar simply because each set requires so much effort.

One strength approach that works quite well is to undulate the loads within a week. For example:

Monday – 5-6 sets of 3-4 reps @ RPE 8-9

Wednesday – 4-5 sets of 4-6 reps @ RPE 8

Friday – 5-6 sets of 3-4 reps @ low RPE (<7)

You would do these at different percentages of your 1RM. For example, you would train the hardest on Monday (with the highest load and effort), do more volume on Wednesday for additional practice and skill development, and finish the week with a low-volume, moderate-effort session to further work on your technique. 

That way, you’d get plenty of practice on a given lift while managing fatigue at the end of the week, so you can train hard again on Monday.

(By the way, you can record your RPE for every set when logging a workout in Hevy.)

With traditional hypertrophy training, the reps don’t need to be varied because you typically do different exercises, and there is enough rep and load variety within the same workout.

For example, you might start with slightly heavier sets on compound/assistance exercises and gradually decrease the weight and increase the reps as you transition into less complex, single-joint isolation exercises near the end of your session.

4. Progression

At its core, strength gains come from gradually lifting more weight while maintaining proper form––balance, range of motion, tempo, and control. As such, the go-to progression approach is to add more weight to the bar instead of doing more sets or reps. The latter two can also work, but not as well as simply lifting more.

Here’s an oversimplified example of linear progression:

Week 1: 5×5 w/ 50 kg

Week 2: 5×5 w/ 52.5 kg

Week 3: 5×5 w/ 55 kg

Week 4: 5×5 w/ 57.5 kg

Week 5: 5×5 w/ 60 kg

Week 6: 5×5 w/ 62.5 kg

Week 7: 5×5 w/ 65 kg

Week 8: 5×5 w/ 67.5 kg

Hevy lets you track your performance on each lift you do. Simply navigate to the Exercises tab in the Profile section, search for the relevant exercises, and gain access to important data like the heaviest weight you’ve lifted, your projected 1RM, and how your progress looks on a graph.

The goal isn’t to unnecessarily do more sets if the current number is enough or more reps but to add weight on the bar, which is what you’re after, anyway.

Progression in muscle growth training is more nuanced and less rigid because you can do more to create the necessary overload in multiple ways. These include:

• Doing more reps with the same weight
• Lifting a heavier weight for the same number of reps and set
• Doing more sets within a training week

The specific exercise will also affect how you progress. For example, you may do a compound lift in the 6-8 rep range, which allows you to add weight more frequently. 

However, you may also do an isolation exercise in the 15-30 rep range, which means your go-to method of progression would be to do more reps. This is because increasing the weight, even by a small amount, can affect your technique and your ability to target a specific muscle. 

So, by first increasing the number of reps per set, you can build enough strength to handle a small increase in the weight without it affecting your form.

Here is a broad example of how you might go about creating an overload by strategically increasing the number of sets, reps, and the load you use:

Week 1: 10 sets (baseline)

Week 2: add a rep or two

Week 3: 12 sets (same performance per set)

Week 4: add a rep or two

Week 5: 13 sets (same performance per set)

Week 6: add a rep or two

Week 7: increase the weight

Week 8: 14 sets (same performance per set)

Your average RPE will likely increase throughout this sample progression, so it’s good to leave around three reps in the tank at the start. As you do more sets and reps, and add weight here and there, you will get closer to failure each week. 

Once you do seven or eight weeks of productive training, deload for a week and then maintain the volume while striving to increase the reps, then add a bit of weight, then increase the reps again.

Of course, consider how you feel and how well you recover (looking at things like energy levels, grip strength, sleep quality, mood throughout the day, and motivation to train) before adding more to your training.

5. Exercise Selection

Like loading and progression, exercise selection tends to be more rigid when optimizing training for strength gains rather than muscle growth. This is because, as discussed in the Frequency section above, to get better at an exercise, you must practice it often enough. 

So, you don’t have as much wiggle room to do multiple exercises and must instead focus on the main lifts you want to improve and include some close variations. 

This is even more important if you compete (or plan to) in a sport like powerlifting because you need to develop a strong back squat, deadlift, and bench press, and learn to do them in a specific way that adheres to the sport’s rules.

In such a case, you might only do a handful of exercises like the three main lifts and some variations to build strength and bring up weak points that may be affecting your performance:

• High-bar back squat
• Front squat
• Box squat
• Safety bar squat
• Belt squat
• Paused squat
• Split squat
• Deficit deadlift
• Romanian deadlift
• Good morning
• Glute ham raise
• Close-grip bench press
• Pause bench press
• Spoto press
• Weighted dips
• Overhead press

But even if you simply want to get stronger and don’t care about powerlifting, compound lifts with free weights are more suited for heavier loading.

For muscle growth, you can (and should) do two or more exercises for most body parts to promote more balanced regional growth that leads to better overall development. 

To give the back as an example, that might mean doing at least a horizontal and vertical row. However, you can also include a hip hinge for the lower back and a shrug for the trapezius. 

Can you build a solid back with just deadlifts and barbell rows? Of course. But it may not be as balanced (you’d stimulate some muscles a lot and undertrain others), it’s impractical and highly draining to do 15-20 sets of rows and deadlifts each week, and it’s boring––this affects enjoyability and motivation.

The same goes for other muscles, even small ones like the shoulders, biceps, and triceps. As you vary the angle of attack, range of motion, loading, and other variables, you preferentially target some muscles and some areas of the same muscle better.

To give the quads as an example, you can do high-bar back squats three times per week, but it would likely be far better and more sustainable to do something like back squats on Monday, leg presses on Wednesday, and leg extensions on Friday, or all in the same workout, if you follow a bro split or 3-day push/pull/legs plan, similar to some of the 25+ training plans you can find in the Hevy routine library.

Again, these are contradictory. If you want optimal strength, you must do fewer exercises, but that’s generally not the best strategy for muscle gain.

6. Rest Intervals

First, we have training for muscular strength. Let’s say your goal is to do sets of five reps at 85% of your 1RM. In that case, you should rest long enough to do all prescribed reps without lowering the weight or training at an unsustainably high RPE. This typically means recovering for 3-5 minutes between sets.

You don’t generally need as much rest for your cardiovascular system and slow-twitch muscle fibers to recover, especially from low-rep sets. However, research shows that fast-twitch fibers (the ones producing the most force and impacting your strength output the most) are the slowest to recover.

In practice, you might feel ready to start the next set after two minutes of rest. However, you might not be as strong and be forced to train at a higher RPE or alter your technique to get the same number of reps.

Second, we have training for muscle size. As with other differences like progression, loading, and exercise selection, you also have more flexibility with your rest intervals. 

Similar to training for strength, the main purpose is to rest long enough to maintain your performance from set to set or only experience a slight drop-off. For example, if you get 10 reps in the first set, you should ideally get at least 8-9 reps in the last set with the same weight and at roughly the same RPE.

However, given that the hypertrophy rep range is broader (5-30 reps), you can follow these guidelines:

• 2-3 minutes on moderate (5-10 reps) sets on compound lifts
• 1.5-2 minutes on accessory/isolation lifts where you do 10-15 reps
• 1-1.5 minutes on light (15-20+ reps) isolation work close to the end of your workout

If you use Hevy to log your workouts, you can set a default rest timer in the settings and adjust it up or down on each exercise you add to a session.

Ask yourself the following questions if you’re debating when to do the following set:

• Is my breathing normal and is my heart rate somewhat back to normal?
• Is the primary muscle I’m training relatively recovered?
• Are there any secondary muscles that need more time to recover because they might otherwise limit my performance?
• Do I generally feel ready to do my next set and train close enough to failure?

7. Advanced Techniques

Strength training revolves around straight sets, such as 3×5, 4×6, and 5×3. The goal is to lift heavy weights (80%+ of 1RM), rest enough between sets, and progress by adding more weight to the bar. 

Training for growth is more flexible and allows you to try different approaches, so long as they train the target muscles well and can be logged and tracked. This means you can also use advanced resistance training techniques like supersets and drop sets. 

Both techniques allow you to do more work in less time without seeing a significant reduction in your performance.

For instance, a superset is when you pair two exercises that target different parts of your body and do them back to back with little to no rest in between:

• Bicep curls with tricep extensions
• Barbell rows with calf raises
• Chest presses with bicep curls

You can easily pair two exercises into a superset in Hevy by tapping the three dots icon next to a movement and selecting + Add To Superset.

Drop sets are also a time-efficient option. Here, you lift a weight close enough to failure, immediately reduce the weight by 20-40%, and do a few extra reps. 

A viable alternative to drop sets is a cluster set, in which you train close to failure, rest only briefly (say 10-20 seconds), do a few extra reps, rest for a bit again, and do a couple of reps. You can repeat this several times to train a given muscle quite well in a limited time.

8. Progress Tracking

Like other categories, muscle strength and growth overlap because both require monitoring performance. This is obvious for people looking to get stronger: If you lift more weight over time, you’re moving in the right direction.

Overall performance improvements are also a good indicator that you’re building muscle because bigger muscles produce more force on average. However, we must look at the data a bit differently. 

While you can get impressively strong on compound lifts by working on your neuromuscular efficiency and skill, simply lifting more in any context doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve built muscle. For example, your bench press 1RM might go up, but that doesn’t always mean your chest, shoulders, and triceps have gotten bigger.

So, what progress metrics do you look at when trying to build muscle? 

Most notably, long-term strength improvements on most, if not all, exercises you do in all rep ranges. 

To give the bench press as an example again, a 1RM max increase doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve built muscle. Similarly, strength gains in sets of three to five reps can also be attributed to neuromuscular improvements. 

But if you lift more weight on sets of 5-10, 10-15, and 15-20 and can maintain that performance for multiple sets, and then go on to lift more weight on several other exercises like the incline dumbbell press, the chest fly, the tricep pushdown, and the lateral raise, you’ve probably gained muscle mass.

For example, I use Hevy to log my workouts. On the left is a column labeled Previous that shows my past performance on each exercise. This gives me a target for the current workout to create an overload.

I can also look at my performance history on each exercise I log and track metrics like the heaviest weight I’ve lifted, my projected 1RM, the most reps I’ve done in a set and a workout, and my best set and session volume. I can see each of these on individual graphs to determine if I’m actually progressing on any lift.

As long as there’s a positive trend in at least some of my exercises, I can take this as a sign that I’m building muscle.

Additionally, for muscle growth, you should also monitor your weight, body fat, circumference measurements, and overall appearance through progress photos. This will give you a more complete picture.

• Weight – step on the scale at least three to five times per week, in the morning, on an empty stomach, and calculate the average. It should ideally go up every one to two weeks.
  
• Circumference measurements – measure different body parts, such as the upper arms, chest, waist, hips, and thighs (also the calves and forearms if you care about growing them) every three to four weeks and write the values.
  
• Progress photos – take the same progress photos in the same conditions, using the same poses, and compare your visual changes over time.

Record these metrics and upload your progress photos to Hevy to compare the data easily and look at the long-term trend.

What Would a Good Strength & Muscle Growth Plan Look Like?

You must accept the tradeoffs and realize that you’re not getting the best of both worlds because it’s simply impossible to. If you train optimally for one goal, your progress toward the other objective will inevitably be slower.

That said, it is possible to train for strength and muscle gain simultaneously. In fact, some popular plans include the PHUL split. 

Here are tips for combining strength training and hypertrophy:

1. Do more free-weight compound exercises. These are more fatiguing but also make you stronger. This means using more barbells and dumbbells and less cables and gym machines.
   
   
2. Start most or all of your workouts with your heaviest sets. Use heavier weights in the lower rep ranges at a moderate to high RPE on free-weight compound lifts.
   
   
3. Include accessory exercises that train multiple muscles and can safely be loaded in the 6-10 rep ranges. This range is a good middle ground because it’s growth-promoting but also carries over to strength development.
   
   For example, if a bodybuilder does back squats and leg extensions, you may choose to do back squats and leg presses, Smith machine squats, hack squats, or Bulgarian split squats.
   
   Because of the exercise selection, you should generally avoid doing more than 15 reps per set. Leave the 15-30 range, along with less challenging bodyweight exercises, when strictly doing a hypertrophy phase.
   
   
4. Do fewer total sets per muscle than you would during a hypertrophy-focused training phase. The exercises you’ll be doing are more fatiguing and harder to recover from. Also, because you will do more exercises that train more than one muscle, there will be more volume overlap.
   
   This means secondary muscles like the shoulders, biceps, and triceps will get more indirect stimulation and will not need as much direct work to grow while you build strength.
   
   
5. Prioritize the load by mostly doing ten or fewer reps per set but always focus on proper technique. Make sure your range of motion, tempo, and body position remain consistent as you lift more.

Conclusion

While similar in some ways, training for optimal strength and muscle growth differs in key aspects, such as the number of sets, loading strategies, training frequency, progression, exercise selection, rest intervals, progress tracking, and the ability to include advanced workout techniques. 

You can set up a balanced training program that helps you work toward both goals, but you will have to accept some trade-offs––most notably, that you won’t progress optimally toward both goals. 

Download the Hevy app if you’re serious about optimizing your training. With it, you can log all the relevant training details like the sets, reps, weight, and RPE, set up an automatic rest timer, track your performance on each lift, log body measurements, and upload progress photos.

Also, navigate to the routine library for two free PHUL programs that can help you build muscle and get stronger.

FAQ

1. Should I train to failure for strength and hypertrophy?

Taking a limited number of sets (for example, the last set for a given muscle group) to failure can offer modest benefits for muscle growth. However, you should generally avoid pushing to the limit on heavy compound lifts because that can affect your technique and put you in danger.

2. Can you get stronger without getting bigger?

Yes, it’s possible to get stronger, especially in lower rep ranges (1-5 reps), without gaining muscle. This is because, in addition to muscle size, factors like overall skill, neuromuscular efficiency, and how comfortable you feel with heavy lifting impact your strength output.

3. Do I need to eat differently for strength vs. muscle growth?

You should maintain a slight calorie surplus (100-150 over maintenance) for steady weight and muscle growth. The same approach can also work if you want to train for strength and muscle gain.

If you strictly want to gain strength without gaining weight, you can at around maintenance (that is, aim to maintain your current weight) and eat 0.7-1 gram of protein per pound to support muscle recovery.