Do You Know the Differences Between Strength, Power and Hypertrophy Training?

With gym work, it’s important to have goals to work towards and to know how to achieve them.

Unfortunately, these three training types are very similar and as they overlap with each other, you may not be training specifically for what you want (although each one will still help the other because of the overlap)!

What is strength training?

Strength training can be defined as using resistance to force your muscles to increase their mass. In doing so, you can increase the maximum amount of force that your muscles can apply. Another way to think of this, is that you are increasing the density of your muscle fibres - whilst you do increase the size of the muscle, you’re mostly increasing how much force they can exert.

Examples = Using a resistance machine or free weights in the gym and doing 5 sets of 5 reps.

What is power training?

Power can be defined as applying the maximum amount of force as fast as possible, or as an equation: Power = Strength x Speed. Whilst doing this type of training you will still be overlapping with strength and hypertrophy training, but the main point of this is that you are increasing the speed at which your muscles can apply their full force. The key thing with this is that the movements need to be fast, so if you start to slow your reps down you are no longer doing power training.

Example = Plyometric training such as box jumps or jumping lunges

What is hypertrophy training?

Hypertrophy training is training to increase your muscle mass primarily through increasing the volume (this is often what people refer to as bulking). This type of training will still help to increase your strength, but the main thing is that the size increases.

Example: Any resistance-based exercise performed for roughly 10-12 reps over 3 or more sets.

To summarise

All three of these training techniques are effective and can be used alongside each other. The style of training you choose to focus on more will depends on your goals and preferences.

If you still aren’t sure of what the differences are or feel like you need help with your own training, please feel free to get in touch and we can look at booking you in for a consultation with one of our experienced personal trainers!