Strength By Fitness
Why is it a slight health & fitness problem, relatively speaking, that the world has fallen in love with making hypertrophy the be-all end-all of strength training? Well that is what we will talk about in todays fact-based Strength By Fitness article
Let us start this Strength By Fitness article by stating the obvious. There is nothing wrong with appreciating and training for better hypertrophy outcomes.
Period.
Simply by increasing ones lean muscle mass via strength training & proper food choices will result in better health outcomes, and increased strength, and better bone mass, tendons and insertions over time. So this is a healthy, and viable fitness choice.
What we are saying, however, is this.
If you make hypertrophy your no.1, or even worse, your only fitness pillar you will never end up nearly as healthy, fit, athletic or physically capable as you could have been. It wont even be close to be frank.
In the end you wont even end up much more muscular looking any way.
At least not when you compare the outcome over many years, and 1 or 2+ decades of consistent weekly strength training to the athletically focused version of youself who trained the same amount of time, but instead of hypertrophy being the one and only consideration you prioritized increased performance, athleticism, health, cardiovascular health and capacity, and strength instead.
This entire premise, is, of course, assuming, that we are talking about healthy, steroid free people and athletes who are training not just for performance, and or good looks but also vastly superior health, strength, speed, endurance and wellness too.
Bodybuilders with little regards for health, athletic capacity and physical performance who abuse steroids will, for obvious reasons be capable of achieving unreal amounts of lean muscle mass. But this will come at the cost of diminished health outcomes and substantially reduced fitness capacity in all the other metrics that should matter much more for most other athletes and people. If they just spent some time actually thinking through their health and fitness choices in a proper way.
Dont believe me? This simple fitness, health and sports reality is at full display in the YouTube video down below of Dr Mike trying to train with a few navy seals. Not to mention every gym you will ever visit.
When Injury free Performance is the main exercise pillar.
- Physical Capacity 99%
- Strength 99%
- Explosive Power 99%
- Athletic Performance 99%
- Health Outcomes 100%
- Lean Muscle Mass ( Hypertrophy ) 98%
- Healthy, Active & Fit Older Age 100%
- Mobility 99%
Exercise progression when health is a main pillar.
- Physical Capacity 99%
- Strength 99%
- Explosive Power 99%
- Athletic Performance 99%
- Health Outcomes 100%
- Lean Muscle Mass ( Hypertrophy ) 98%
- Healthy, Active & Fit Older Age 100%
- Mobility 99%
When hypertrophy is the main exercise pillar.
- Physical Capacity 55%
- Strength 65%
- Explosive Power 45%
- Athletic Performance 35%
- Health Outcomes 80%
- Lean Muscle Mass ( Hypertrophy ) 99%
- Healthy, Active & Fit Older Age 75%
- Mobility 90%
Our articles as a podcast
in case there is any confusion. I want you to strength train, every week, all-year-round, for the rest of your life. I want you to build more muscle mass, its just that I want that muscle mass to be as physically capable, fit strong & healthy as it looks to be.
Coach Mike, Strength By Fitness
In the three charts above you can clearly see that on a population level people who primarily train for hypertrophy will end up progressing far worse in many important health and fitness metrics than they would have, if they had instead opted to train for athletic capacity and health as their main focus.
Despite this change in focus and outcome priorities the actual hypertrophic ceiling that you will be able to reach really wont be much different, if you can even notice any difference at all compared to a strict hypertrophic focused fitness approach.
These charts obviously doesnt represent every n1 example on the planet.
But we are talking about the fact-based trajectories of most people when they exercise on a weekly all-year-round basis while eating nutritiously sound, higher-SPC, high-protein foods. The exact progress across each metric will of course differentiate between individual people, not just due to genetics but from slight differences in nutritional intake and exercise modalities.
But this is the kind of beneficial trajectory differences you should expect when you start exercising for performance, and health instead of hypertrophy.
Real Fitness Capacity Training Walks All Over Hypertrophy as The No.1 Fitness Pillar
For us natural, healthy minded fitness folks who does not abuse steroids, the hypertophy difference after 10 years of training for either hypertrophy on one hand, or strength, health & performance on the other hand will be indestinguisly.
Knowing this simple, proven real-life fact, now ask yourself.
Does it still make sense for most non competitive bodybuilders to prioritize hypertrophy? I mean social media, YouTube and gyms are filled with people who will never compete in bodybuilding, yet they obsess over hopefully gaining 0.1% better hypertrophy while actively making choices that reduce real fitness capacity, explosive power, mobility, strength and endurance, and ultimately their health outcomes.
Does this training priority make any sense at all for all these people when you really think about it?
Mind you, in case there is any confusion. I want you to strength train, every week, all-year-round, for the rest of your life. And I want you to build more muscle mass, its just that I want that muscle mass to be as physically capable, fit strong & healthy as it looks to be.
So what I am asking you is if it really makes sense for anyone who is not a steroid abusing competitive bodybuilder to make hypertrophy their n1 strength training objective, when we know they will achieve 99% of the same hypertrophy while lifting weights for strength, explosive power, sports and athletic performance, and real-life physical capacity instead.
The obvious answer is, no, it makes no sense for people who will never compete in bodybuilding to strength train for hypertrophy. lift weights for actual strength, health and performance instead. And get the lean body mass for free.
So the better and smarter way to exercise, all-year-round is this.
Lift a bigger load with a little more explosive contractions.
Control the negative, but do not think that an overly slow negative will provide any additional benefits.
Train with a good enough technique to remain injury free, just do not fall into the hypertrophy, bodybuilding trap of chasing excessive technique perfection, and mind muscle connection to the point where you lower power, and strength progression.
Train across the entire range of motion of the movement pattern.
Do not artificially limit your movement due to a fear of hurting yourself, or thinking that it somehow allows for better hypertrophy.
Instead teach your body to lift challenging weights, in an injury free way across the real movement pattern of each exercise.
Do not fear RIR 0, and exhausting yourself, it is incredibly hard to overtrain. Sure, it can happen, but as long as you progress or maintain over time and you feel ok in body and mind you are doing just fine.
Cardio is part of being fit.
Outside of doing bigger exercise choices in the weight room and not being afraid of bigger loads, make use of cluster sets, and lift those 1 to 3 rm weights for 8+ reps.
Do not forget about your cardiovascular health and fitness. Being as fit as you look means having a big endurance engine so you can explode in intervals with all those muscles, and recover fast.
Being fit means being able to run 30 to 60 minutes 2 or 3 days per week despite being strong as hell. Do intervals, do slower runs too, run outdoors up and don hills. sprint, jump, stretch.
Do yoga, do martial arts, climb mountains, swim in the ocean. Play sports.
And take as many daily micro walks as you can. Or get up and do some bodyweight squats, shadowbox, run up and down the stairs.
Do not be like Dr Mike, instead be like Coach Mike and do it all, and enjoy superior outcomes across health, fitness, strength, endurance, speed, athleticism, physical capacity and power, all while rocking as much lean steroid free muscle mass as you could ever build.
Now, that is how you build a smarter, and better fitness life.
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Complete view of Higher-SPC, High-protein foods & fitness outcomes.
All fitness modalities matter, because they build unique benefits.
Should you train to failure or not?
Great health & fitness habits need great food choices too. This is why Higher-SPC meal recipes from Strength By Fitness contain vastly more micronutrients, protein, and fiber than the lower-SPC foods you are eating way too much of. Coach Mike, Strength By Fitness.
This is why our higher-SPC food approach is so beneficial for both human health and the planet. You get more nutrients and better outcomes no matter what your goals are, all the while you are lowering your own destructive footprint on the planet by eating healthier and smarter. Creating one incredible symbiosis of health and fitness-friendly food habits with great sustainability outcomes as far as your food habits are concerned. Couple this with the simple fact that as we age we all need more nutrients per unit of energy, not less.
But why is this?
Because our ageing bodies increasingly become a little bit less effective at putting the nutrients we eat to good use, absorbing less, and processing it slightly worse.
The good news is that regular weekly fitness for the rest of your life, coupled with our healthy, nutritionally rich higher-SPC foods makes for the perfect combo, no matter your age or fitness, health, and body composition goals.
a High-protein, and higher-SPC intake universally PROVIDES better fitness progression, health, body composition, cognitive and exercise recovery outcomes
In the above image, we have visualised another treat with the SPC-range.
In Strength By Fitness recipes, the higher the SPC range, the more macro and micronutrients you are consuming per unit of energy.
And yes, the opposite applies.
The more energy your food contains per unit of nutrients, the less protein, quality carbs, healthy fat, fiber, vitamins, and minerals you are going to get from your daily food choices, potentially driving yourself obese and nutritionally deficient at the same time.
These two statements are universal. No matter if you like it or not, this is how all food habits play out.
Albeit, there is of course a breakpoint at the upper range of higher-SPC foods where a very active person might need to slightly scale the SPC-range back in order to maintain a high enough energy intake to sustain their sports performance and body mass.
Very few people exercise that much, and hard, however.
Not to mention that billions of people consume way too much energy per unit of nutrient foods, ie, lower-SPC foods with too few nutrients. This is why protein-rich, higher-SPC foods are, for most of humanity, the perfect, diet tribe neutral food life approach with a slight edge of health and planetary benefits for people who incorporate more plant-based nutrients together with their protein base.
Finally, before I let you go to enjoy the rest of your healthy fit week and life. Lets take a look at old men strength from folks who just keep grinding, not by training for hypertropy, but for strength and power.
This part of our article is partially written for fun.
But I am also writing this section to prove a valuable point about fitness and health, and the way we humans age.
You see, when you train for performance and strength, becoming older doesn’t make us weak, fat, out of shape, and fragile anymore.
It makes it a tiny bit harder to maintain those things, yes, but you have two trajectories to pick and choose between, guys.
You can make your health and fitness trajectories drastically dive off the cliff as you age by embracing poor lifestyle habits in alcohol consumption, tobacco, sloppy nutrient-deficient food with too much energy, too little protein, fiber, and micronutrients per unit of energy ( low SPC ), and you can couple that with too little exercise and daily physical activity.
And if this is how you do life, things will decline over time in a massive way.
Or, you can embrace nutritionally intelligent higher-SPC food habits that are rich in protein, fiber, and micronutrients, and lift weights and do some form of cardio every week for the rest of your life and enjoy insanely better health and fitness trajectories, all life long.
This is worth repeating, because you are in control over your trajectory, not entirely, but in a hugely influential way.
So let us take a look at drug tested powerlifters across all adult age groups.
The study.
809,986 powerlifting attempts worldwide. These people where all drug-tested, and no vests or other strange power lifting equipment was allowed.
The top 10% for age group 18–35 first.
Squat: ~2.8× BW for powerlifting men, and just behind them we find ~2.3× BW for female powerlifters.
In the Bench: Men are quite a bit stronger than women at ~2.0× BW.
And female powerlifters achieved ~1.3× BW.
Finally we have the Deadlift where both genders perform really, really well.
~3.3× BW for men, and an impressive ~2.7× BW for the women.
Impressive right? Yes it is.
But here is the thing.
Even the 80-year-old powerlifters included in the study managed to pull more than 2× their BW in the deadlift.
Yes, that’s more than double their own bodyweight in the deadlift at 80+ years of age.
How’s that for strength 💪💪.
The recipe is simple: don’t train for hypertrophy, train for life by making strength, power, athletic performance, explosive running speed and endurance your fitness priorities.
Train with proper, injury-free effort and full range of motion.
Do those contractions in a more explosive way and challenge those mighty, explosive muscle fibers. Reps can be high, they can be clustered together, or they can be low, too. Just push the effort and load a bit.
When you do this, old age won’t make you unfit, old, and frail like the stereotype depicts life for all people above 70, where you can’t even get up out of bed on your own.
Cited study.
Daniel J. van den Hoek, Patrick L. Beaumont, Adele K. van den Hoek, Patrick J. Owen, Joel M. Garrett, Robert Buhmann, Christopher Latella,
Normative data for the squat, bench press and deadlift exercises in powerlifting: Data from 809,986 competition entries,
Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport,
Volume 27, Issue 10,
2024,
Pages 734-742,
ISSN 1440-2440,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsams.2024.07.005.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1440244024002469?s=09
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Maintain that nutritionally rich, high-protein, higher-SPC food intake for life, Health is a habit, not a 4 week diet.
Cited study.
1. The 2005 high-protein study.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16002798/
2. Genetics matter but habits own the driver’s seat.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167494323002601?s=09
3. Effect of resistance exercise on body composition, muscle strength and cardiometabolic health during weight loss .
https://bmjopensem.bmj.com/content/11/3/e002363?s=09
4. Trends in nutrition and health between 1900 and now.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213434423000221?via%3Dihub
5. Capturing what counts in muscle failure and sarcopenia.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40885204/?s=096. Low SPC, UPF and high-protein.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42255-025-01247-4
7. High-protein myths.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0002916525002540?s=09
8. Non exercise, physical activity and its impact on health and mortality.
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.124.072253?s=09
9. Health outcomes improve for every 3% of additional plant-based protein you consume.
https://ajcn.nutrition.org/article/S0002-9165(23)66282-3/pdf
You can also read this article over at Medium if you are a paying Medium Member.
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