How do i strength train for running without having my muscles hypertrophy?***

Run a lot of miles

terminator t1000 wrote:

Any program advice to get strong but not hypertrophy?

Runningart may weigh in here. As a summary, however:

Focus on multiple-joint exercises. Do a limited number of sets, and limited reps per set--typically 3-5. Lift weights (once you've learned the exercise) that are as heavy as you can manage while keeping good, controlled form. And move up the weight that you use, progressively--don't artificially level off at a given resistance.

This kind of routine will focus on developing your abililty to recruit a high percentage of motor units within a given muscle, rather than growing the muscle itself. You'll get stronger with little hypertrophy.

terminator t1000 wrote:

Any program advice to get strong but not hypertrophy?

This is virtually impossible.

Why is hypertrophy--in your view--undesirable?

pretty decent blogpost dealing with this topic. Heavy weights, Lower repetitions. The old school philosophy of light weight high reps is out of date.

lol lol lol lol wrote:

terminator t1000 wrote:

Any program advice to get strong but not hypertrophy?

This is virtually impossible.

No, it's not. Alan, where are you?

Why is hypertrophy--in your view--undesirable?

Presumably because of the energy cost of moving extra mass.

I agree one can get stronger without getting bigger, by training the body to better recruit the fibers you already have. And remember, no one puts on any muscle or weight in the gym: they put it on in the kitchen. If you do not eat a surplus of calories, you will not gain weight.

I'm wondering the opposite thing, how do I put on mass when I workout and run? I get too lean if I do runs over 6 or 7 miles; anything above 10 makes me look famished.

I want the body of Alan Webb, not Alan Culpepper.

rsbones wrote:

I agree one can get stronger without getting bigger, by training the body to better recruit the fibers you already have. And remember, no one puts on any muscle or weight in the gym: they put it on in the kitchen. If you do not eat a surplus of calories, you will not gain weight.

Runners are in a unique position to put on unwanted muscle mass because they eat large amounts of calories daily as well as protein and carbs. A nutritionally dense diet helps a runner to properly recover. However, couple this with the breakdown/rebuilding of muscle from weightlifting and you could unwittingly be fueling the growth of more muscle than you want or need.

You should not use a lift routine that another would use to bulk up. I was taught to lift for endurance rather than strength, focusing on toning rather than building muscle. This is done with more reps but at a much lower weight. I (6ft, 165 lbs) might do three sets of bicep curls with 25-30 lbs (10-15 kg) for 12-15 reps, no jerky motions but steady and consistent. Bench: 100 lbs (45 kg), same number of sets and reps. Whatever exercise, the rule about weight is to lift as much as will allow you to do 3 sets of 15 reps.

The key here is *toning*, not bulk. You won't gain as much strength as power lifting, but you will be able to utilize it in a more efficient way without gaining much more muscle mass.

The previous posters did a good job at answering this question but what we really need to is determine what your goals are. Strength training is broad. Are you doing high intensity strength training and working with high weight low reps? Or are you working with lower weights and higher rep counts? Are your exercises functional to running or for gross strength purposes? If you run enough, no style of weight training will put much weight on you. But first you have to determine what your goals are because there is easily scores of styles of strength training that all have different purposes. There is also no proof that hypertrophy that occurs during a normal moderate to high mileage training program will slow a runner down. This is a myth propagated by people with no knowledge of strength training. If you are training for distance and yo are training properly you will not see a performance decrease with gain of muscle. To a further extent, the idea that you must train the body with low weight high reps to prepare for endurance events is flawed as well. Canova has his runners do maximal effort hill sprinting bouts up to 10 seconds long to focus on the phosphocreatine system for this exact reason. To recruit the highest muscle fibre types (Type IIB) you need to perform at a very intense, short bout of exercise.

lease wrote:

lol lol lol lol wrote:

This is virtually impossible.

No, it's not. Alan, where are you?

Why is hypertrophy--in your view--undesirable?

Presumably because of the energy cost of moving extra mass.

Alan would agree that it's virtually impossible.

As to the second point, weight training, done correctly, can improve the strength (at a given percentage of 1RM) to weight ratio of virtually anyone--while increasing LBM.

Olympic powerlifters have to have routines to increase strength without concurrent mass increase; otherwise they'd grow out of their weight class. Obviously it is possible.

Also, there's no such thing as "toning" vs. strength increase vs. hypertrophy. High reps/low weight is a waste of time.

vox cursor wrote:

You should not use a lift routine that another would use to bulk up. I was taught to lift for endurance rather than strength, focusing on toning rather than building muscle. This is done with more reps but at a much lower weight. I (6ft, 165 lbs) might do three sets of bicep curls with 25-30 lbs (10-15 kg) for 12-15 reps, no jerky motions but steady and consistent. Bench: 100 lbs (45 kg), same number of sets and reps. Whatever exercise, the rule about weight is to lift as much as will allow you to do 3 sets of 15 reps.

The key here is *toning*, not bulk. You won't gain as much strength as power lifting, but you will be able to utilize it in a more efficient way without gaining much more muscle mass.

Vox, your post pretty well summarizes the conventional wisdom. Two observations: first, for many people this routine will increase strength; second, for many it will result in little weight gain. Two good things. And, of course, different things work for different people; it sounds like you found a routine that gave the results you wanted, so good for you.

Nevertheless, I think the kind of routine you advocate is less than optimal. You make a good point, in the first sentence that I quoted above; but the fact is, reps in the 12-15 range are what many bodybuilders use, *precisely* to "bulk up" (at least during part of their training year). Of course, one can mostly avoid that bulk by using light weights, as you suggest, and/or never increasing weights; but this will end strength gain at low levels.

I do regret that Runningart2004 is mostly unavailable these days (I'm told he's in the military). Unfortunately, the LRC search function and Google don't pick up his handle; and he signs his posts "Alan," which the LRC search function conflates with another, more well-known Alan. Too bad. Anyway, here's a thread that touches on many topics:

I'm sure that with imagination and patience it should be possible to find some more of his stuff through Google, and maybe the LRC search function.

In any case, I suspect that he (and others) would agree that, to *keep* improving strength without significant mass gain, it's most important to focus on routines that target the central nervous system (CNS): limited sets, heavy weights, few reps.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

[Note that I spared us all the "there's really no such thing as 'toning'" debate. This was done to death when I was in grad school, and just thinking about the topic bores me silly now. Mostly semantics, and doesn't affect any of the above discussion, anyway. I just didn't want the real physiologists to wonder why I didn't address the topic!]

Nevertheless, I think the kind of routine you advocate is less than optimal for many runners.

Fixed. Sorry--my bad.

Vox, you wrote a summation of your weight training but you did not mention what the purpose was. I don't know a single person who considers themselves an athlete that does strength training for "toning". I'm not sure what that even means. Are muscular athletes not toned? You mention bicep curls. What do bicep curls do to help a runner? What, even, does a bench press do to help a runner? I'm not attacking these exercises, necessarily, but do you just do them because you saw them in a book or do you have a reason to do them? No workout should be done without purpose just as no run should be done without purpose. You mention that you want to lift as much as you can that will cover three sets of fifteen so you are obviously lifting for failure. Why then would you expect to lift for failure and then try to determine before the exercise even begins how long it will take? Save sets and reps for pre-exhaustion workouts. Focus on quality of repetition over anything else in exhaustion workouts.

Typophan wrote:

Olympic powerlifters have to have routines to increase strength without concurrent mass increase; otherwise they'd grow out of their weight class.

Powerlifting is not an Olympic event.

Powerlifters and Oly weightlifters often move up in weight classes as they continue to train for the obvious reason that they gain LBM over time.

Anabolic steroids are used by virtually all top weightlifters and powerlifters because they are...ANABOLIC.

terminator t1000 wrote:

Any program advice to get strong but not hypertrophy?

What Happens within the muscles in response to different rep ranges?

By Tom Venuto

The primary difference between the effects of rep ranges on the adaptive response depends on whether the load affects neural factors (low reps) or metabolic factors (higher reps). When you train with low reps (1 – 5), the adaptations that make you stronger are mostly neurological: You develop an increased ability to recruit more muscle fibers, you stimulate the higher threshold fibers that are not activated with high rep, low weight sets, you decrease neuromuscular inhibition, and there is increased coordination between the muscle groups. However, with low reps, the hypertrophy (size increase) of the muscle fibers is minimal.

In other words, reps under 6 make you stronger, but they don’t necessarily make you bigger because the strength gains come from adaptations in the nervous system – the muscle fibers and other muscle cell structures do not hypertrophy (enlarge). This explains why certain athletes, powerlifters and Olympic lifters can be wicked strong but they don’t look as strong as they are.

When you train with medium reps (6-12) the adaptations are more metabolic and cellular and only moderately neurological. This is why 6-12 reps is the range most often recommended for bodybuilding and hypertrophy. You get bigger and stronger in this rep range, but your strength gains are not maximal. This explains why some bodybuilders look stronger than they are (and why they are often the brunt of jokes made by powerlifters and weight lifters; i.e. “big, weak, slow, useless muscles”, ha ha).

When you train with higher reps (13-20+), the adaptations are mostly metabolic and cellular. This rep range produces local muscular endurance, a small degree of hypertrophy in certain cellular components such as the mitochondria and the capillaries, and very little strength.

There is not a distinct line where neural adaptations end and structural/metabolic adaptations begin; rather it is a continuum, like temperature or colors of a rainbow.

For example, when you train in the 6-8 rep range, the adaptations are still somewhat neural, but also metabolic/structural: In this rep range, you get excellent strength gains and also excellent hypertrophy. In the 8-12 rep range, there is still some neural adaptation, but less than the 6-8 range and much less than the 1-5 range. The advantage of the 8-12 rep range is that you get maximal hypertrophy (this is the best rep range for pure size increases when strength is not the number one concern). You will also get stronger, of course, but not nearly to the degree as you would training with lower reps.

Rep range Percent of 1 rep max Training Effect Goal desired

1-5 reps 85-100% Neural Strength & power little hypertrophy

6-8 reps 75-85% Neural & metabolic Strength & Hypertrophy

9-12 reps 70-75% Metabolic & Neural Hypertrophy & some strength

13-20+ reps 60-70% Metabolic local endurance some hypertrophy, little strength

Now, what exactly happens inside the muscle to make it get bigger and not necessarily stronger? Quite simply, ALL the structures inside the muscle cell grow when exposed to the appropriate training stimulus.

Remember back in high school when you had to memorize those diagrams of cellular anatomy (or you would get an F in the class)? There were all kinds of organelles and cell structures such as the endoplasmic reticulum, the mitochondria, the golgi complex, ribosomes, centrioles, Lysosomes, and cytoplasm. Remember all that stuff?

If you’re anything like me, you defied your biology teacher to explain the reason why you had to memorize all that crap and what good it would do you in the "real world." Well, now that you're in the "real world" and you want strength and muscles, here you go:

A muscle cell has all the same cell structures as other body cells, and they all take up space. When speaking of the muscle cell, you mostly hear about the mitochondria (the cellular powerhouse where energy production takes place), the myofibrils (the actual muscle fibers themselves) and the fluid inside the cell (called cytoplasm in other body cells, or in the case of the muscle cell, its called sarcoplasm).

Myofibrillar hypertrophy is caused most effectively in the 6-8 rep range. This contributes to the most visible increases in muscle mass and cross sectional width. However, that doesn’t mean you should only train in the 6-8 rep range. If you want to make the other "stuff" in the muscle cell grow as well, you should train in all rep ranges. The mitochondria and sarcoplasm also take up a substantial amount of space in the muscle cell and they are best stimulated with high reps. High rep training can also stimulate increased capillarization in the muscle (just ask former Mr. Universe and Mr. Legs himself, Tom Platz, about the effectiveness of high rep leg training done in addition to the low and medium rep training).

In addition, there is more than one type of muscle fiber: you have slow twitch (type I) and fast twitch (type IIa and IIb). Slow twitch muscle fibers also hypertrophy from higher reps (although they have the least potential for size increases, which is why you should spend more time below 13 reps if it's muscle mass you're after).

So here’s the take home lesson: If you’re an athlete and your primary goal is strength and power for improved sports performance, then a good majority of your training is going to be in the 1-5 rep range. This will help make you stronger, faster and more powerful without adding muscle bulk. If you’re a bodybuilder and your primary goal is muscle mass, then the majority of your training should be done in the 6-12 rep range, but you should also do a little bit of training in the 3-5 rep range for power and strength, which will later facilitate hypertrophy (and prevent the powerlifters from making fun of you), and you should do a little bit of training in the 13-20+ rep range to facilitate the development of slow twitch muscle fiber, build mitochondrial density and increase capillarization.

Surprised that no one has mentioned that slow twitch fibers hypertropy at a very small rate (as compared to fast or intermediate fibers). Combine this physiological advantage with a balanced vegetarian or low protein diet and I think that for the vast majority of (distance)runners, excessive weight gain due to muscle hypertrophy is not a large concern.

I am blown away! Thanks for posting. I obviously have been lifting incorrectly for distance running, though I doubt it has done me much harm since I always put off lifting to run.

solo manitee wrote:

reps under 6 make you stronger, but they don’t necessarily make you bigger because the strength gains come from adaptations in the nervous system – the muscle fibers and other muscle cell structures do not hypertrophy (enlarge). This explains why certain athletes, powerlifters and Olympic lifters can be wicked strong but they don’t look as strong as they are.

Wrong.

Hypertrophy is primarily a product of LOAD and TUT (time under tension).

Optimal rep range = sufficient load x sufficient TUT.

While both sets with a 95% IRM (sufficient load, insufficient TUT) and 55% IRM (sufficient TUT, insufficient load) are suboptimal, they will nevertheless stimulate substantial hypertrophy in almost every weight training newbie--and those that won't respond probably won't respond to any weight training program.

The reason powerlifters and weightlifters are often stronger than they look has to do with three factors.

1) Genetics for strength and genetics for aesthetic appeal (bodybuilding) are opposed in certain areas. While, for a given individual, a larger muscle is almost always a stronger muscle, bodybuilding favors individuals with long muscle bellies and short tendon attachments, while strength sports favor the opposite--short muscle bellies and long tendon attachments.

Take a look at the biceps of Ahnald

and Franco

Arnold's biceps were more visually impressive, as the longer muscle bellies allowed for greater size development, yet Franco could curl far more--despite weighing @60lbs less.

Other instances include waist size--a small waist is an advantage to a bodybuilder and a distinct disadvantage to powerlifters and weightlifters--and height--weightlifters in particular benefit from short stature as they need move a heavy weight less distance.

2) Because powerlifters and weightlifters--with the exception of superheavyweights--compete in weight classes, it is to their advantage to minimize their non-functional bodyweight, both fat and muscle. This means, for example, that weightlifters almost never train their pecs, neither weightlifters nor powerlifters commonly *directly* train their lats, calves, biceps, rear delts, etc.

3) Muscle fiber type--See Jeremey Wariner is not a distance runner and Peter Snell was not a spinter.

4) Skill