Let's talk about strength and hypertrophy. If you would, please remind us what strength and hypertrophy are in terms of the specific adaptation they represent. What I mean by that is when somebody is training for strength, what are they really training for? Obviously, it means the ability to move more weight, but I know that it includes a number of other things as well.

And when one is training for hypertrophy, for the growth of muscle fibers, what does that represent? Because I think if people understand that, they will far better understand the methods and protocols that are going to be best for strength and hypertrophy. At its core, you've basically described it. When we talk about strength, we're talking about an actual function.

So can you create more force across a muscle or muscle groups or total movement? And when we talk about hypertrophy, now we're specifically referring to just an increase in size. There's no actual mention of function. So a muscle can grow larger without actually technically being stronger for a number of reasons.

However, there is a strong relationship between strength and hypertrophy. So a lot of the times in the general public, in the lay conversations, we sort of lump those two things in as the same thing. And so we have to recognize people who are new to training or people even who are intermediately trained.

There is a huge overlap between strength and hypertrophy. Once you get past that though, they become disentangled. And a good example of it is this. If you look at the strongest people in the world, this would be people who compete in the sport of powerlifting. That's a true test of maximal strength.

So it is a deadlift, a bench press, and a back squat. And you're going to do a one repetition max in all three of those. And so whoever wins is the person who lifted the most amount of weight one time. That's it. It's not like World's Strongest Man where it is how many reps can you do in a row or your time, right?

It's a true maximal strength test. And you compare those to say bodybuilders. Now both of those individuals are strong. And both of those individuals have a lot of muscle. However, it is extremely clear the powerlifters will be significantly stronger than the bodybuilders on average. There are individual exceptions, but we're just talking collective averages.

And the bodybuilders will have more muscle than the other ones. In addition, whether you look at Olympic weightlifting or powerlifting or World's Strongest Man for that matter, there are weight classes. And the reason is as you go up in weight classes, you will always see the world records go higher and higher and higher, right?

So you can clearly get stronger without adding any muscle. However, there's a point, right, where you simply have to add more mass to get a higher number. And that's why we have weight classes in those sports and in combat sports and lots of other things. And we have, there's a lot of confusion, right?

Because people think, man, either these are the same thing or if I want to get stronger, I have to get bigger, which is not the case at all. Another misnomer here is I can't get stronger unless I add muscle. That's not true either, right? It's a similar idea. So what I'm saying is you have the ability to do whatever you'd like.

If you'd like to get stronger and add muscle, great. If you add muscle, you're probably going to bring some strength along for the ride. However, if you want to get stronger and you don't want to add muscle for any reason, personal preference on aesthetics, whether you're in a weight class and you simply can't afford it, it is quite easy to get stronger and not add much muscle mass either.

And so differentiating these two things is one of them is simply a measure of size and the other one is a measure of force. And when we talk about strength, what we're really talking about are two unique components. Component one is what I call the physiology. So what is the ability of the neuromuscular system?

What is the ability of the muscle fibers to contract and produce force? The other one is what we call mechanics. Mechanics is simply things like—it's minutiae down to how long your femurs are relative to your tibia or other things. This is biomechanics. This is also technique. This is skill.

This is how smooth you feel. This is are you firing the right muscle group in the right sequence and order. And all of these things play into strength. So somebody who maybe has more force capability in their muscle fibers but their technique in the movement is worse may lose in a competition.

Or somebody, again, who's—like if you go into the world of speed and power, especially you'll hear a lot of people talk about like the rhythm. And there's just a certain rhythm that has to happen if you want to jump as high as possible or run as fast as possible.

But that's all mechanics at this fundamental level. So when we look at hypertrophy, it's just still simply about how big the muscle is. So those are really the similarities and distinctions between strength and hypertrophy.