muscle mass and tonnage

[tiny&mighty]

Why do many coaches, including Andy Baker, sometimes prescribe for strength and hypertrophy separately?

Andy Baker does not do that broadly speaking, but with specific audiences in mind. He actually reiterated this point in a recent episode of his podcast (#10, segment starting around 23:20).

In my understanding, Andy's take is that strength equals hypertrophy for the overwhelming majority of people and trainees. His position gets more nuanced when discussing the needs of someone who has already gotten big and strong from strength training. In this tiny minority of trainees, there can be situations where focusing on adding muscle mass in specific locations may be necessary to address specific weaknesses. But that does not apply to the rest of us mortals, since we are not big or strong enough to have developed such weaknesses. We're just weak overall.

[Yngvi]

These are excellent questions.
Question 1
Due to confounding variables, very difficult to test. If all else is equal, I think singles across would more optimal for muscle mass but they take a lot more time (for practical purposes most people would not have the time, hence 5’s across is better on that metric).

Question 2 (Rip and Santana v Baker)
Rip - does the sarcasm of your “complexity is so fucking cool!” response mean you don’t like the fact that Baker and many other coaches often program differently for strength and hypertrophy?
Santana - One of the main premises of your argument is flawed. Ever since the 90s, most elite bodybuilders don’t train the way you say...

1. What audience is Starting Strength intended for?
2. When compared to the primary intended audience for SS, does programming become more individualistic and complex for advanced lifters or less?
3. Why does periodization work for advanced lifters, whereas it is not required for novice or intermediate lifters?

Research these questions and it will give you your answers.

[Bigredbull]

1. What audience is Starting Strength intended for?
2. When compared to the primary intended audience for SS, does programming become more individualistic and complex for advanced lifters or less?
3. Why does periodization work for advanced lifters, whereas it is not required for novice or intermediate lifters?

Research these questions and it will give you your answers.

1. Questions are not satisfactorily answered with other questions.

2. Your vague questions have little (if any) direct relevance to the specifics of my questions. Rip admitted to the OP that he didn’t know the answers - respect to his honesty.

[henryjones]

1. What audience is Starting Strength intended for?
2. When compared to the primary intended audience for SS, does programming become more individualistic and complex for advanced lifters or less?
3. Why does periodization work for advanced lifters, whereas it is not required for novice or intermediate lifters?

Research these questions and it will give you your answers.

Errr, Rip authored books called Starting STRENGTH and Practical Programming for STRENGTH, the latter devoting a large amount of time to intermediate and advanced lifters. Given strength is directly related to muscle size, my (largely unanswered) questions are self evidently relevant and your response is very, very dumb.

[Mark Rippetoe]

2. Your vague questions have little (if any) direct relevance to the specifics of my questions. Rip admitted to the OP that he didn’t know the answers - respect to his honesty.

I do not respond to "gotcha" posts very well. I know the answers, and I have discussed them several times, most recently here: Bodybuilding Mythology | Mark Rippetoe and which Henry has chosen to ignore in favor of the latest thing from Professor Schoenfeld. Since you missed it, let me help:

The next Awful Truth is that training for hypertrophy is not dependent on high-rep sets with little rest. It is dependent on muscle growth, which is facilitated by forcing the use of heavier weights over time, and far more efficiently accomplished with sets of 5 reps. Muscles get stronger by increasing their cross-sectional area, by adding contractile protein. I'm not interested in the precise mechanism, because I don't have to understand the details of the mechanism to observe the phenomenon. But I've observed the process of getting bigger for decades – if you drive your squat up from 135 to 405x5x3 and your deadlift from 185 to 495x5, you got a lot bigger. Because if you didn't grow bigger by eating enough protein and calories, you never got to these numbers. And these are not crazy numbers that require the use of drugs, but rather normally accessible progress for normal males with a couple of years of correct training on sets of 5.

The process of getting stronger makes you bigger. You already know this. So stop pretending that light weights and high reps are how you get huge. You don't want to train heavy? Fine with me. But doing light weights for high reps gets you stuck. You know this too.

But if you guys want to lift light weights, go ahead. Have fun.

Errr, Rip authored books called Starting STRENGTH and Practical Programming for STRENGTH, the latter devoting a large amount of time to intermediate and advanced lifters. Given strength is directly related to muscle size, my (largely unanswered) questions are self evidently relevant and your response is very, very dumb.

My thoughts on most of this are detailed in the gray book. But over the past few years since the book was written, Andy and I have both come to the conclusion that light weights at high volume/short rest periods are basically useless for just about everything, but especially for getting big and strong, and that "hypertrophy" is a function of lifting heavier weights, which cannot be done in 5 sets of 12 with 90 seconds rest. The VAST majority of lifters are novices who need to add 5 pounds to their 3 sets of squats on the next workout, and the intermediate and advanced lifters still paying attention to us do not need to spend any time doing 8-12 reps unless they've decided they are already big and strong enough.

[GioFerrante]

Andy Baker does not do that broadly speaking, but with specific audiences in mind. He actually reiterated this point in a recent episode of his podcast (#10, segment starting around 23:20).

In my understanding, Andy's take is that strength equals hypertrophy for the overwhelming majority of people and trainees. His position gets more nuanced when discussing the needs of someone who has already gotten big and strong from strength training. In this tiny minority of trainees, there can be situations where focusing on adding muscle mass in specific locations may be necessary to address specific weaknesses. But that does not apply to the rest of us mortals, since we are not big or strong enough to have developed such weaknesses. We're just weak overall.

You have a lot more flexibility as an intermediate/advanced trainee. In PPST Andy talks about the fact that bodybuilders may add in additional isolation/assistance type work to a strength program in order to promote some growth. Hell, in SS Rip opens up the chapter on the bench talking about how the dumbbell bench press is an excellent exercise (that you will not be doing during the NLP). On Andy's blog he also talks about shit like training side deltoids, abs and calves separately. However, this would all be after completing the NLP.

Your curls are gonna do a lot more for you if you can curl 80 lb dumbbells than 40 lb dumbbells. And the best way to get strong enough to do that is to deadlift 600, squat 500, Bench 350, and press 250. If you look at guys like Stan Efferding, they were all freaky strong powerlifters long before they started doing any bodybuilding shit. People still like to pretend that completing an NLP is somehow a hindrance to a later focus on bodybuilding. Makes no sense. SS is a NOVICE strength program that you complete prior to any other physical endeavor.

[Steven Kalin]

1. Questions are not satisfactorily answered with other questions.

2. Your vague questions have little (if any) direct relevance to the specifics of my questions. Rip admitted to the OP that he didn’t know the answers - respect to his honesty.

You seem really at odds with the methods around here. Evidenced by the fact that Santana isn’t even involved in this thread, yet you are trying to argue with him in it. Why don’t you just go somewhere else? I’m sure Zach Tealander would love to have you.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Bigredbull and henryjones are the same guy. Deactivated. You guys need to help me spot these pieces of shit faster.

[Steven Kalin]

Bigredbull and henryjones are the same guy. Deactivated. You guys need to help me spot these pieces of shit faster.

I was going to say “ I’m on it”, but I went back and looked, and I’m not sure I would have spotted it from his post history, BigRedBull at least. How did you?

[Mark Rippetoe]

Stef has tools.